AfDB President Adesina to focus on power

The African Development Bank (AfDB) will focus in coming years on tackling Africa’s chronic power shortages to try to unlock the continent’s economic potential and end its vulnerability to fluctuations in commodity prices, its new president said yesterday.

Nigeria’s Akinwunmi Adesina took the helm as the eighth president of the continental body yesterday at Abidjan, the Ivoirien capital headquarters.

“Africa could easily be growing at double-digit GDP rates if we solve this problem of energy,” said Adesina, the immediate past minister of agriculture who added: “Energy poverty on the continent has to be solved as a matter of urgency, as a matter of scale. This is going to be my most important priority,” according to a Reuters report.

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo led the Federal Government delegation to the ceremony.

Also at the inauguration were Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor Godwin Emefiele, Governors Abdullahi Ganduje (Kano), Darius Ishaku (Taraba), Aminu Tambuwal (Sokoto), ex-Ekiti State Governor Kayode Fayemi and former Finance Minster Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, business Mogul Aliko Dangote and United Bank for Africa (UBA) Managing Director Philip Oduoza.

Though it boasts nearly a billion people, sub-Saharan Africa consumes about as much power as Spain, with less than five per cent that number, due to poor generating capacity and limited transmission networks. Two-thirds of Africans have no access to electricity.

The lack of reliable power grids is a major obstacle to industrialising the continent’s economies at a time when Africa hopes to make a transition from commodities producer to a manufacturing hub and challenge Asia where labour costs are rising.

According to the International Energy Agency, Africa requires an additional $450 billion in power sector investment to halve blackouts and achieve electricity access for all in urban areas by 2040.

As of 2013, the bank – founded in 1964 and funded by African nations and shareholder countries outside the continent – had lent 67.22 billion Units of Account or about $94 billion.

A development economist with a doctorate from Purdue University in the United States, the 55-year-old was elected in May to head the Ivory Coast-based institution for a five-year term.

“Africa has to industrialise,” he said. “We have to add value … so that (Africa) does not expose itself to the continued volatility … of global prices for commodities.”

Africa needs to mimic China and other Asian countries’ use of an abundant supply of cheap labour to take advantage of globalisation and attract investment, Adesina said. And as wages rise in China and elsewhere in Asia, Africa can offer a competitive edge with its cheaper workforce.

Wages in China have increased by over 10 per cent annually over the past decade, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics.

“There’s a lot of opportunity in Africa today to take advantage of these wage differentials, especially in terms of light manufacturing, textiles, footwear and others,” he said.

Osinbajo urged African leaders to discard economic ideas and myths holding them bound to a few options.

He called on them to embrace creativity, innovation and change towards charting the pathway for growth and development in the continent.

According to him, the western economies, particularly United States have toed the path to emerge from the economic meltdown in 2008.

Osinbajo said: ”In 2008 western economies faced with what Ben Bernanke described as the ‘deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression’ abandoned conventional free-market thinking and embraced State-bankrolled stimulus plans to forestall the imminent collapse of their economies.”

“This proved once and for all that the monster called the economy cannot be allowed to prowl the streets with its free-wheeling struts without the leash of a trainer.”

Osinbajo, who represented President Muhammadu Buhari, queried: “Do African economies not require a different paradigm? How can trickle down paradigms work when half of our populations are extremely poor?. Do we not need some attention to social investment?”

He said that conditional cash transfers to the poorest segments, universal primary healthcare schemes, school feeding programs, can energise local economies and create important multipliers in the economy.

The Vice President however expressed some optimism that the African Development Bank, given its recent achievements under the out-gone President, Donald Kaberuka, can greatly assist Africa address some of its socio-economic problems.

Under the new leadership of Dr. Adesina, he said that the AfDB needs to redouble its efforts in addressing the needs of the fragile areas, through institutional support, emergency assistance, and bold pro-poor interventions in health, education and agriculture.

Osinbajo also urged the new AfDB President to focus on how economic policy can produce economic empowerment for women, and all people who have become disempowered and whose voices are seldom reflected in the rhetoric of policy.

The new AfDB President, at the occasion unfolded a 5-point agenda which would be given utmost priority in the next five years.

He listed the priority areas as Light Up and Power Africa; Feed Africa; Integrate Africa; Indusrialise Africa and Improve quality of life for the people of Africa.

Adesina said that unlocking the potentials of Africa for Africans will be his goal at AfDB.

Dr. Adesina, who was Nigeria’s immediate past Minister of Agriculture, became the eight President of the AfDB and the first Nigerian to occupy the office since the creation of the Bank in 1963.

He took over from Kaberuka, who served for 10 years from 2005 to 2015.

Present at the ceremony were the President of Cote D’Ivoire, Allasane Quattara and his Prime Minister, Daniel Kaplan Duncan, Governor of Kano State, Dr. Umar Ganduje; the Governor of Taraba State, Darius Ishaku; the Governor of Sokoto State, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal; former Governor of Ekiti State, Dr  Kayode  Fayemi; Governor of Central Bank, Godwin Emefiele.

Others are: former Minister of Finance, Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala; and Nigeria’s Ambassador to Cote D’Ivoire, Mrs Ifeoma J. Akabogu Chinwuba.