The African Development Bank Group has begun laying the groundwork for a continent-wide financial coordination platform aimed at resolving one of Africa’s most persistent obstacles to development: the fragmentation of its own financial institutions and the chronic shortfall in long-term capital reaching transformative projects. The proposal gained momentum on 19 November in Abidjan, where Bank President Dr. Sidi Ould Tah hosted leaders of regional development finance institutions, private sector partners and securities exchanges in a series of working sessions that signaled a shift toward a more unified African financing architecture.
Discussions circled around a shared reality. Africa’s governments face rising financing needs at a moment when domestic revenues remain constrained and global capital markets have become more expensive.
With many countries grappling with deteriorating credit ratings, rising debt-service obligations and climate-driven shocks, institutions such as the African Development Bank Group, the West African Development Bank, the Africa Finance Corporation, the Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank and Shelter Afrique are under growing pressure to deliver more with limited balance sheets.
The meeting sought to answer a practical question: how can Africa’s leading financial institutions align their pipelines, standards and instruments in ways that reduce duplication and unlock larger flows of affordable capital?
Dr. Ould Tah told the assembled leaders that a new platform was needed precisely because the continent’s resource demands have outpaced existing arrangements. The Bank estimates that Africa needs more than USD 200 billion annually to meet its core development and infrastructure needs, and separate climate assessments raise that figure significantly.
In this context, he argued, African DFIs carry strategic weight because they sit close to the ground, understand local regulatory complexities and often serve as the first financiers of infrastructure or housing projects that commercial banks consider too risky.
Participants stressed that Africa’s development finance system is strong in intent but fractured in execution. Overlapping mandates, scattered project pipelines and inconsistencies in technical standards often slow down implementation or push projects into parallel structures.
Executives at the meeting pushed for harmonized rules and shared project preparation facilities to reduce cost overruns and prevent the kind of delays that weaken investor confidence. A shared platform, they argued, would make it easier for institutions to co-finance projects, pool risk and accelerate delivery of everything from regional transport corridors to affordable housing programmes.
The conversation turned repeatedly to the issue of liquidity. Admassu Tadesse of the Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank emphasized that regional institutions often face liquidity shortages that raise their cost of capital. He suggested a continent-wide standby facility, backed by the African Development Bank’s AAA balance sheet, that could stabilize regional DFIs during periods of market volatility. Without such mechanisms, he said, African institutions will remain vulnerable to external shocks and will struggle to scale financing to the levels needed.
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Executives also pointed to the growing link between political risk and financing constraints. Serge Ekue of the West African Development Bank noted that the wave of coups in West Africa in recent years had reshaped the region’s credit landscape. His institution avoided a ratings downgrade by maintaining strong equity buffers, but he acknowledged that regional shocks continued to distort capital flows and limit the affordability of long-term borrowing. For this reason, he said, collaboration with larger institutions such as the African Development Bank Group was essential for preserving regional stability in the financing system.
Other leaders echoed the theme of collective strength. Dr. George Agyekum Donkor of the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development argued that syndication, co-lending arrangements and joint due diligence with stronger partners could allow smaller regional DFIs to leverage credibility they cannot build alone. Sameh Shenouda, speaking for the Africa Finance Corporation, underscored the continent’s shortage of bankable projects and equity resources, noting that Africa’s ability to attract long-term financing will remain constrained until institutions collaborate deeply on project development, early-stage risk reduction and common communication strategies at global fora.
The housing sector was also highlighted as an area where better coordination could shift outcomes quickly. Shelter Afrique’s CEO, Thierno-Habib Hann, described the way fragmented efforts often slow down affordable housing pipelines, arguing that joint project preparation and shared technical teams would help deliver large-scale housing programmes that match demographic pressures in cities from Dakar to Kampala.
African Development Bank Vice President Solomon Quaynor listened to the deliberations and offered a commitment to system-level reform. He stressed that cooperation would extend beyond the Bank and into the networks of the participating DFIs themselves, with bilateral follow-ups planned to design new capital-allocation approaches. A task force will now move forward with work on strengthening DFI capital bases, refining de-risking mechanisms, developing concessional lending tools and creating liquidity structures that can support regional institutions through market disruptions.
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Dr. Ould Tah closed the meeting with a forward-looking message, noting that the consultations had revealed both gaps and opportunities that could shape a new African financial ecosystem. He announced that the Bank will take the next stage of discussions to London in mid-December, where he will meet private-sector investors and credit rating agencies immediately after the final session of the seventeenth replenishment of the African Development Fund. This will be a critical moment, as the strength of ADF-17 will influence how much concessional financing is available to African governments over the coming years.
The emerging coordination platform reflects a recognition that African institutions cannot afford to compete in silos. The scale of Africa’s development and climate transition needs is too large for fragmented efforts, and the cost of capital is too high for overlapping pipelines. The work launched in Abidjan could determine whether Africa’s financial sector becomes a more integrated engine for development or continues to operate as a collection of strong institutions working in isolation.
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