AfDB appeals for $10b to help poor countries

By JOSEPH MWAMUNYANGE
Special Correspondent

The African Development Fund is seeking $10 billion, up from the current $5 billion, to assist poor countries.

African Development Bank (AfDB) president Donald Kaberuka told The EastAfrican that the world community has a unique opportunity to scale up the amount of funds available to the African Development Fund for it disbursement to poor countries.

“The continent is not as badly off as before; its economies are growing unlike in the past. We should not lose this opportunity,” he said.

The AfDB president said that after the debt cancellation to poor countries, a number of them from Africa, there is a danger that some could fall back into the debt trap.

“That is why I feel we need more funding for the ADF, which would in turn give the funds to low-income countries at 1.5 per cent interest over a period of 40 years,” he said.

According to the AfDB, the continent needs to put trade at the centre of development. The bank has so far increased lending to the private sector from $270 million to $1 billion and reduced lending to middle income countries.

As it is, the countries have many competing needs and thus work in synergy with other partners to fund projects targeting regional programmes, whose funding will increase from 15 to 20 per cent.

The priority areas are infrastructure, agriculture, human resource development and good governance.

“We want to increase lending to the infrastructure sector from 40 to 60 per cent, while agriculture would be given 20 per cent with rest going to training the human resource and governance,” said Dr. Kaberuka.

Dr Kaberuka explained that there was a misconception among many people that agriculture was being neglected because of what was being allocated to the sector. For instance, when a project like the construction of a dam for irrigation takes place, people tend to look at it only as an infrastructural project.