The Association of African Development Finance Institutions (AADFI) successfully held its 46e Ordinary General Assembly (OGA) on November 30e, 2020. It was the first OGA meeting of the AADFI held virtually in the history of the Association, due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Mr. Thabo Thamane, Chairman of the AADFI and CEO of Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency (CEDA), in his Opening Address at the meeting, highlighted the achievements and challenges of the Association in the past year, and the impact of Covid-19 on the operations of the Association in 2020.
According to Mr. Thamane, the Association made progress in: i) strengthening the AADFI Secretariat and its Governance to improve service delivery; ii) enhancingthe application and use of the Prudential Standards, Guidelines, and Rating System (PSGRS) by DFIs, which resulted in a record of 30 DFIs scoring 80% and above in the peer review raking of 2019; iii) improving the level of implementation of capacity-building for member DFIs and key stakeholders, as the programmes implementedincreased by 51% compared to the activities planned for 2019. The capacity-building activities focused on key operational areas of development finance and sustainable development agenda. Furthermore, in the area of External Cooperation and Partnership, new partnerships were developed while strengthening the existing relationships in promoting development finance and development agenda in Africa.
The OGA was declared open with a keynote address by Mr. Ahmed Attout, of the Financial Sector Development Department of the AfDB who represented the Bank. He conveyed the goodwill and solidarity of the President of the AfDB to the Association and to the African DFI community. His address highlighted the Bank’s strategy directed at supporting African DFIs in addressing the development agenda on the continent. This includes knowledge development, provisions of financial solutions and capacity building among others. The Address noted that the OGA meeting was being held “few weeks after the first global gathering of public development banks at the Finance Common Summit. In the joint declaration issued at the end of that summit, and signed by AADFI, several of its members, and of course, the African Development Bank, the world’s public development banks committed to support the transformation of the global economy and societies towards sustainable and resilient development”. The Bank pledged to work with the African DFIs in realizing this noble goal.
The Ordinary General Assembly was attended by Chief Executive Officers and Senior Executives of AADFI member DFIs, representatives from key stakeholders and development partners.