The African Development Bank Group's 2025 Annual Meetings open next week amidst shifting winds of global trade.
Forty-seven of Africa's fifty-four countries have been affected by new U.S. trade measures, with 22 facing tariffs of up to 50 percent on a wide range of exports. In the context of evolving U.S. foreign assistance priorities and reduced USAID funding, African nations are navigating a changing landscape where traditional forms of support can no longer be taken for granted.
The meetings, which will take place from May 26 to 30 in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, the Bank's headquarters, will be held under the theme: "Making Africa's Capital Work Better for Africa's Development."
This strategic theme calls on African member countries to look within the continent to identify and harness Africa's diverse capital resources - human, natural, financial, and commercial - to drive the continent's structural transformation.
Amidst the current global climate, the meetings offer participants the opportunity to address these challenges and boost domestic production, build regional value chains, and negotiate from a position of strength. It's an opportunity for the continent to strengthen its internal markets, diversify its trade partners, and take greater control of its economic destiny.
In a recent interview with CNN, African Development Bank President Dr Akinwumi Adesina warned these policy shocks could trigger significant economic disruptions. "When those currencies weaken," he noted, "you're going to find that high inflation becomes a problem... and the cost of servicing foreign currency debt is going to get worse."
Offering solutions, Adesina highlighted constructive engagement with the United States, diversification of export markets, and most crucially, acceleration of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) - a $3.4 trillion internal market that could redefine the continent's economic future. It also means deepening regional markets, boosting local value addition and rethinking how Africa mobilises and deploys its resources - not as fragments of foreign assistance, but as catalysts for self-driven, large-scale development.
This also means leveraging Africa's human capital, its green energy potential, and its vast resources - from lithium to labour - to strike fairer deals and drive value addition at home.
The African Development Bank, Africa's premier development partner
For more than a decade, the African Development Bank has laid the groundwork for just such a transformation.
In the 10 years since Adesina introduced the "High 5s" agenda -- spanning power, food, industry, integration, and quality of life -- it has already touched over half a billion lives.
The African Development Bank has invested over $55 billion in infrastructure, mobilised more than $225 billion in investment interest through the Africa Investment Forum, and is leveraging partnerships with multilateral development banks for transformative projects like Mission 300 -- an initiative to bring electricity access to 300 million Africans by 2030.
More than 6,000 delegates, including African heads of state and government, finance ministers, central bank governors, development partners, private sector representatives, civil society leaders, academics, think tanks and opinion leaders, NGOs, and other stakeholders, are expected to take part in what promises to be a defining event.
During the meetings, governors of the African Development Bank will elect a successor to current Group President, Dr. Adesina, whose second five-year term ends on 31 August.
For more information on the Annual Meetings click here.
