A national investment bank will bring much needed investment and create new technology, infrastructure and services that will lead to a fairer and greener economy.
Mega development projects can have a positive impact. But there are risks. Between 2004 and 2013, some 3.4 million people were ‘physically and economically displaced’ by World Bank projects alone.
Major development banks are funding logging, mining and infrastructure projects that are having enormous impacts on nature. Here, forests are being razed along a newly constructed road in central Amazonia.
William Laurance
Big new investors such as the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank are key players in a worldwide infrastructure, and that could be bad news for the environment.
The challenge for new African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina is to ensure that it develops its own Africa-relevant solutions to the continent’s problems.
Reuters/Luc Gnago
As the African Development Bank Group changes leadership, Africa’s multilateral financier must chart a new course, including raising the contribution and voice of Africans in the institution.