The President of Senegal, Macky Sall (pictured, right) calls on the G20 members to extend the debt moratorium granted to Africa. “The African Union wants to work with its partners for an extension of the G20 moratorium to 2021. An exceptional situation, exceptional measures,” he said, speaking at the summer university of the Mouvement des Entreprises de France (Medef). As a reminder, the G20...

Dr. Akinwumi A. Adesina has been re-elected to serve a second five- year term as President of the African Development Bank Group on Thursday, August 27, 2020 by the Board of Governors of the Bank. A globally renowned development economist and a World Food Prize Laureate and Sunhak Peace Prize Laureate, Dr. Adesina has distinguished himself in driving a bold agenda to reform the Bank and...

WorldRemit, the British financial company specializing in cross-border digital payments, has expressed its intention to acquire Sendwave, the electronic money transfer company operating in East and West Africa. The amount of the transaction has not been disclosed, but Bloomberg estimates it to be more than $500 million. According to Breon Corcoran, WorldRemit's CEO, the company is...

The government of Nigeria approved the disbursement of 10 billion naira ($26 million) to support road carriers in this tough pandemic context. The announcement was made on August 26 by the Minister of State for Transport, Gbemisola Saraki, who was receiving a delegation from the Public Transport Owners of Nigeria Association (PTONA), led by Chairman Isaac Uhunwagho. The money is domiciled for...

In Kenya, the decline in the net margin for Standard Chartered Bank widened in the second quarter of 2020. While it was down only 16% in the first quarter, the Bank's net profit contracted further and ended the first six months of the year down 31.9% to KSh3.2 billion ($29.5 million). It was KSh4.7 billion in H1 2019. As is the case for all Kenyan banks that have already published their...

Initially seen at 7.2%, Côte d’Ivoire’s economic growth is now expected to be 1.8% due to the impact of the coronavirus on the economy. Speaking during the opening of the AfDB annual meetings on August 26, the Ivorian President, Alassane Ouattara (pictured), said the weakest performances will come from Agriculture, construction, transport, and tourism, which are the most affected...

The European Union announced the suspension of its army and police training missions in Mali. The decision follows the military coup that happened last week with the resignation of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta.   This situation, which is just the fallout of a long social and political crisis marked by popular protests, was condemned by the EU as well as the African Union, ECOWAS, and...

A five-year project to rehabilitate the Mzuzu-Nkhata Bay road with African Development Bank financing has made the road one of Malawi’s safest, according to the project’s completion report. The project, began in 2013, wrapped up in 2018. The road was formerly very narrow and poorly maintained, and it required an hour and a half to travel the 50 kilometres between the northern towns of Mzuzu...

The Green Cluster of SMEs in Côte d'Ivoire has awarded the African Development Bank a prize for the best technical and financial partner committed to promoting the green economy and supporting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) toward a low-carbon transition. The prize was awarded on 30 July at the Green Awards, an initiative launched in 2019 under the sponsorship of the...

The 55th Annual Meetings of the African Development Bank and the 46th meetings of the Board of Governors of the African Development Fund (ADF) began in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, on Wednesday, 26 August 2020. In his opening speech, the President of Côte d’Ivoire, Alassane Ouattara, highlighted the unusual context of this year’s Annual Meetings, taking place against the backdrop of the...