World
Five Candidates Vie to Replace Adesina as AfDB President
By Adedapo Adesanya
In September 2025, Mr Akinwumi Adesina will bow out as the President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), a position he has held since 2015 for over two terms of five years each.
The race to take over the reins of the African lender has heat up in the last few months.
Now, five candidates are running to take over from the Nigerian in an election scheduled to hold on Thursday, May 29, during the annual meeting in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
This election comes at a time that shrinking concessional funding, reduced aid from wealthy countries, and unstable borrowing costs have made the bank’s $318 billion capital more important than ever for Africa’s development.
So Who are the Candidates?
Business Post has gathered information via Reuters and other sources about the five candidates.
Swazi Tshabalala Bajabulile (South Africa)
A banker with 30 years of experience, Tshabalala was, until October 2024, AfDB’s senior vice president.
The South African is the sole female candidate and she plans to transform the bank if she takes the helm.
Tshabalala said if delivered properly, infrastructure would allow Africa to tap its resources – from minerals to finance to trade. She wants to create innovative financial instruments, building on the AfDB’s foray into hybrid capital.
Amadou Hott (Senegal)
Senegal’s former economy minister has decades of banking experience from Lagos to London. He would focus the AfDB on African financial self-reliance by mobilising resources and designing projects to keep private money on the continent.
Hott said revenue collection must rise – the average tax to GDP ratio in Africa is 16 per cent, versus the OECD average of 34 per cent, which could boost credit ratings, lower borrowing costs and marshal money for pressing needs, including power and infrastructure.
Samuel Munzele Maimbo (Zambia)
A World Bank vice president on a leave of absence while campaigning, the Zambian has three decades of development finance experience.
As president, he would launch behind-the-scenes work to aggregate data, fix the financial plumbing and streamline regulations to enable Africa’s 54 nations to trade with and finance each other.
Maimbo, who has the backing of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (CMESA), wants a continent-wide approach to everything from debt sustainability to revenue collection and infrastructure.
Sidi Ould Tah (Mauritania)
Mauritania’s ex-finance minister and presidential adviser has run the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa for the past decade.
He is focused on four points: mobilising a broader scope of capital, reforming financial systems, harnessing demographics by formalising the informal sector that employs 83 per cent of Africans and building climate-resilient infrastructure. He believes the AfDB can turn every $1 raised into $10 of productive capital.
Abbas Mahamat Tolli (Chad)
Tolli has held top financial positions across Central Africa, including as Chad’s finance minister, regional central bank governor and president of the Development Bank of Central African States.
He focuses on self-sufficiency, from agriculture to finance, and wants to strengthen governance to cut inefficient, untransparent spending that has mired countries in debt without development.
He believes that Africa suffers a lot of financial outflows due to fiscal evasion or mismanagement of resources.
To make it work, Tolli envisions a “major overhaul” of the AfDB’s operational model by pooling risk, strengthening public-private partnerships and digitizing financing mechanisms.
Tolli said his own life, tending goats as a child after fleeing civil war aged 6, mirrored Africa’s journey and gave him unique in sight into how to lift all those on the continent.
By Kestér Kenn Klomegâh
Africa stands at the cusp of a transformative digital revolution. With the expansion of mobile connectivity, internet penetration, digital platforms, and financial technology, the continent’s digital economy is poised to become a significant driver of sustainable development, intra-Africa trade, job creation, and economic inclusion.
The African Union’s Agenda 2063, particularly Aspiration 1 (a prosperous Africa based on inclusive growth and sustainable development), highlights the importance of leveraging technology and innovation. The implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) has opened a new chapter in market integration, creating opportunities to unlock the full potential of the digital economy across all sectors.
Despite remarkable progress, challenges persist. These include limited digital infrastructure, disparities in digital literacy, fragmented regulatory frameworks, inadequate access to financing for tech-based enterprises, and gender gaps in digital participation. Moreover, Africa must assert its digital sovereignty, build local data ecosystems, and secure cyber-infrastructure to thrive in a rapidly changing global digital landscape.
Against this backdrop, the 16th African Union Private Sector Forum provides a timely platform to explore and shape actionable strategies for harnessing Africa’s digital economy to accelerate intra-Africa trade and sustainable development.
The 16th High-Level AU Private Sector forum is set to take place in Djibouti, from the 14 to 16 December 2025, under the theme “Harnessing Africa’s Digital Economy and Innovation for Accelerating Intra-Africa Trade and Sustainable Development”
The three-day Forum will feature high-level plenaries, expert panels, breakout sessions, and networking opportunities. Each day will spotlight a core pillar of Africa’s digital transformation journey.
Day 1: Digital Economy and Trade Integration in Africa
Focus: Leveraging digital platforms and technologies to enhance trade integration and competitiveness under AfCFTA.
Day 2: Innovation, Fintech, and the Future of African Economies
Focus: Driving economic inclusion through fintech, innovation ecosystems, and youth entrepreneurship.
Day 3: Building Policy, Regulatory Frameworks, and Partnerships for Digital Growth
Focus: Creating an enabling environment for digital innovation and infrastructure through effective policy, governance, and partnerships.
To foster strategic dialogue and action-oriented collaboration among key stakeholders in Africa’s digital ecosystem, with the goal of leveraging digital economy and innovation to boost intra-Africa trade, accelerate economic transformation, and support inclusive, sustainable development.
* Promote Digital Trade: Identify mechanisms and policy actions to enable seamless cross-border digital commerce and integration under AfCFTA.
* Foster Innovation and Fintech: Advance inclusive fintech ecosystems and support innovation-driven entrepreneurship, especially among youth and women.
* Policy and Regulatory Harmonization: Build consensus on regional and continental digital regulatory frameworks to foster trust, security, and interoperability.
* Encourage Investment and Public-Private Partnerships: Strengthen collaboration between governments, private sector, and development partners to invest in digital infrastructure, R&D, and skills development.
* Advance Digital Inclusion and Sustainability: Ensure that digital transformation contributes to environmental sustainability and the empowerment of marginalized communities.
The AU Private Sector Forum has held several forums, with key recommendations. These recommendations provide valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities facing the African private sector and offer guidance for policymakers on how to support its growth and development.
By Kestér Kenn Klomegâh
Lukoil, Russia’s energy giant, has seriously lost its grounds across Africa, due to United States sanctions. Sanctions have complicated the company’s potential continuity in operating its largest oil field projects, grappling its investment particularly in Republic of Ghana, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Reports indicated the sanctions are further dismantling most of Lukoil’s operations, causing significant staff layoffs in its offices worldwide. For instance, Lukoil’s significant upstream operations in the Middle East include a 75% stake in Iraq’s West Qurna 2 oilfield and a 60% stake in Iraq’s Block 10 development. In Egypt, the company holds stakes in various oilfields alongside local partners.
Lukoil has until December 13, 2025, to negotiate the sale of most of its international assets, including those in Asia, Africa and Latin America. It has already terminated several important agreements that were signed with international partners due to difficulties in circumventing the sanctions.
Reports said calculated efforts to diversify exploration business relations is turning extremely complex, and current at the cross-roads, Lukoil will have to ultimately give up existing contracts and agreements it had signed with external countries.
Lukoil’s website reports also pointed to reasons for abandoning oil and gas exploration and drilling project that it began in Sierra Leone. According to those reports, Lukoil could withdraw from almost all of the projects in West Africa.
In addition to geopolitical sanctions, technical and geographical hitches, Lukoil noted on its website, an additional obstacles that “the African leadership and government policies always pose serious problems to operations in the region.” Similarly, the Kremlin-controlled Rosneft abandoned its interest in the southern Africa oil pipeline construction, negatively impacted on Angola, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe.
United States sanctions has hit Lukoil, one of the Russia’s biggest oil companies, like many other Russian companies, that has had a long history shuttling forth and back with declaration of business intentions or mere interests in tapping into oil and gas resources in Africa.
By Kestér Kenn Klomegâh
In New Delhi, President Vladimir Putin, alongside Editor-in-Chief of Russia Today, Margarita Simonyan, took part in the launch ceremony of the RT India TV channel. The TV channel will operate from a new studio complex in New Delhi, marking a new dimension in the bilateral media sphere.
Editor-in-Chief of Russia Today, Margarita Simonyan, indicated that the collaboration, naturally, points to India’s hospitality, affirming that this endeavour was not only worthwhile but long overdue.
Vladimir Putin, officially, launching the TV studio, also emphasized that the Russia Today channel in India, RT India, grants millions of Indian citizens clearer, more direct access into insights about contemporary Russia – the realities, aspirations, and perspectives. He reiterated the existing traditional friendship, and the ties between the Indian and Russian peoples go much deeper into the past; which rests on a solid historical foundation. And at the core of relationship lies mutual interest.
Russia Today is a source of truthful and reliable information, focused on serving the interests of its viewers and listeners. Its main mission is merely to promote Russia, its culture, and its positions on domestic and international issues. Above all, Russia Today strives to convey truthful information about the country and about what is happening in the world. This is the absolute value of Russia Today.
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