President of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Group, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina has come out to say that he plans to build a more resilient bank to provide greater quality impacts on Africans.

Adesina revealed this when he gave his inaugural speech during a virtual ceremony of the swearing-in of the AfDB President on Tuesday in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.

According to him, this can only happen if the bank remains financially strong and sustainable while maintaining the best leadership and capacity.

He added that AFDB will concentrate on the institution, people, delivery, and sustainability over the next 5 years.

His words, “Each of these is encapsulated in the following five areas which combine with the programmatic High 5s to transform the development landscape of Africa.

“Build a stronger institution; strengthen human capacity; enhance effectiveness; deepen quality and impact; and maintain financial sustainability.”

“The bank has delivered impressive results on these High 5s: 18 million people with access to electricity; 141 million people had access to improved agricultural technologies for food security;

“And 15 million people with access to finance from private investments; 101 million people with access to improved transport from infrastructure; and 60 million people with access to water and sanitation,”

“We’ve now targeted to reach 25 billion dollars in climate finance by 2021.

“Our non-sovereign operations for the private sector increased 40 per cent from 1.5 billion dollars in 2015 to 2.1 billion dollars in 2019 with the highest level of 2.5 billion dollars achieved in 2016.”

“With the strong support of the African heads of state and governments, governors of the bank, ministers of finance, the board of directors and staff, we will be ready from today, yet again to roll up our sleeves and continue our collective work to deliver even greater results on our High 5s.”