President of the African Development Bank visits Finland

Press release 108/2016
6 June 2016

Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Lenita Toivakka will meet the new President of the African Development Bank Akinwumi Adesina on Thursday, 9 June. Toivakka and Adesina will discuss the topical development challenges in Africa and the African Development Bank's (AfDB) plans to respond to them.

According to Adesina, who has served as President of the AfDB since September 2015, the African continent faces four special developmental challenges: poverty and inequality, lack of infrastructure, youth unemployment, and fragile states. Adesina is a strong advocate of the so-called High 5s agenda, in which the Bank prioritises the following five sectors: energy, food security, industrialisation, regional integration, and improvement of the quality of life especially through youth employment.

The AfDB Group is an important development financier and development policy actor in Africa. The Bank's central aim is reduction of poverty by means of promoting the African countries' economic and social development. The AfDB Group is committed to the UN sustainable development goals. In its own activities it emphasises support of the countries' own poverty reduction strategies. In 2015, the Bank Group's financing totalled USD 8.8 billion, which represented a 25% increase over 2014. The financing focuses on infrastructure (54.2 per cent) with transport (30 per cent) and energy (16 per cent) as the biggest targets.

Finland's support to the AfDB Group is channelled to the poorest and fragile countries mainly via the African Development Fund (ADF). During the ongoing cycle of AfDB-13 replenishment from 2014 to 2023, Finland's contribution will be a total of EUR 126 million, representing about 2.5 per cent of the entire financing.

The AfDB-13 priorities include developing the continent's infrastructure, strengthening good governance, supporting regional integration, developing the private sector and strengthening know-how and technology.

In its cooperation with the AfDB, Finland lays emphasis on the importance of sustainable economic growth benefiting the poor and seeks to ensure that the cross-cutting objectives of Finland's development policy – gender equality, openness and climate sustainability – feature strongly in all of the AfDB's activities.

Inquiries: Marja Koskela, Diplomatic Adviser to Minister Toivakka, tel. +358 295 350 633, Paula Sirkiä, Counsellor, Unit for Development Financing Institutions, tel. +358 295 351 578.

The Foreign Ministry's email addresses are of the format [email protected]