Former Mauritania’s Finance Minister Sidi Ould Tah has been elected the new president of the African development bank, at the bank’s annual meeting in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
Replacing Akinwumi Adesina, a Nigerian economist who will step down in September after completing the maximum two five-year terms in office.
The AfDB Board of Governors, which includes finance and economy ministers or central bank governors of the bank group’s 81 regional and non-regional member countries, is the highest decision-making authority for the group.
Tah gathered at least 50.01 per cent of both the regional and non-regional votes to beat other candidates in the election: Amadou Hott (Senegal), Samuel Maimbo (Zambia), Mahamat Abbas Tolli (Chad) and Bajabulile Swazi Tshabalala (South Africa).
According to the AfDB group, the president-elect, expected to assume his new office on September 1st, 2025, brings over 35 years of experience in African and international finance. He served as president of the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa for 10 years from 2015, where he led a full transformation that quadrupled the bank’s balance sheet, secured a AAA rating, and positioned it among the top-rated development banks focused on Africa.
A former Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance of Mauritania, Tah has held senior roles in multilateral institutions and has led crisis response, financial reform, and innovative resource mobilisation for Africa, including establishing BADEA’s $1bn callable capital programme for African MDBs. The process to elect a new AfDB president began on July 1, 2024, when the request for expressions of interest to regional member countries to nominate candidates went out. The nomination process ended on January 31, 2025. It was followed by the vetting of the Steering Committee on the election of the president to decide on the candidates who will proceed to the election. Tah’s emergence as President of the African Development Bank, happened at a time African nations are battling aid freezes and cuts by United States and reduced Infrastructure spending and lending by China.
