Sidi Ould Tah from Mauritania has been elected as the President of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Group.
According to a statement from the bank, he was elected on Thursday in Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire during AfDB’s annual meetings.
Akinwumi Adesina from Nigeria, who was first elected in 2015 and led the AfDB for 10 years, will hand over to Tah as he ends his second term tenure.
AfDB said Tah will assume office on September 1, 2025, as the 9th president of the development bank.
According to the statement, Tah was elected by the bank’s board of governors, which includes finance and economy ministers or central bank governors from the bank group’s 81 regional and non-regional member countries.
“The board is the highest decision-making authority for the Bank Group. The results were announced by Niale Kaba, Minister of Planning and Development for Côte d’Ivoire, and Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Bank Group,” the statement reads.
“The winning candidate is required to obtain at least 50.01 percent of both the regional and non-regional votes.”
The AfDB said the other candidates in the election were Amadou Hott (Senegal), Samuel Maimbo (Zambia), Mahamat Abbas Tolli (Chad), and Bajabulile Swazi Tshabalala (South Africa).
The institution said the board of governors steering committee received and approved a total of five candidates by the closing date of January 31, adding that the list of candidates was officially announced on February 21.
Tah, a Mauritanian national, brings over 35 years of experience in African and international finance, the bank said.
“He served as president of the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA) 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,” the AfDB said.
“Tah was also a former minister of economic affairs and finance of Mauritania.”
The organisation stated that he has held senior positions in multilateral institutions and has played a key role in crisis response, financial reform, and innovative resource mobilisation for Africa. His contributions include leading the creation of BADEA’s $1 billion callable capital program for African multilateral development banks (MDBs).
In February, the AfDB Board of Governors’ steering committee on the election of the next president of the bank published Tah’s name alongside four other candidates jostling for the office.
