Their final communiqué states their “determination to use all their resources to lead all African countries to independence and to achieve the development of the continent in unity”.

The origins of the Committee of Nine

Three years later, in 1961, the Monrovia Conference took place. It brought together a host of heads of state and government and gave birth to the Monrovia Group.

At the heart of the debates at this meeting, and at the subsequent one in Lagos, were two draft charters: one for the OAU; and one for an African development bank.

This second proposal was quickly forwarded to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.

A Committee of Nine was soon established, a think-tank for the project, made up of financial experts and economists from nine countries representing Africa’s diversity (Cameroon, Ethiopia, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Sudan, Tanganyika, and Zanzibar – which formed Tanzania in 1964).

The Committee of Nine visits almost all African heads of state, as well as Western and Eastern European leaders, to present their vision of an African development bank.

An agreement is sealed

Many obstacles still had to be overcome before the African Development Bank could be founded.

But enthusiasm, driven by the need to see the continent emerge from poverty, prevailed.

A document was submitted to senior African officials, then presented to all the continent’s ministers, before being co-signed by twenty-three African governments on August 4, 1963, in the form of the agreement establishing the African Development Bank.

This agreement came into force on September 10, 1964.

Thus, in March 1965, after a few months in offices made available to the Bank on the premises of the Economic Commission for Africa in Addis Ababa, a first team of ten people joined the Bank as its first employees.

Following the inaugural session of the Board of Governors of the new institution, held from November 4 to 7, 1964 in Lagos, Nigeria, the Bank set up its headquarters in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, in March 1965.

The first President was Mamoun Beheiry (Sudan), who served from 1967 to 1970.

The Bank launched its first projects in 1966-1967: an equity investment in the National Development Bank of Sierra Leone, and a loan for road construction in Kenya.

Two concessional windows were later created: the African Development Fund (ADF), on November 29, 1972, with 13 non-African countries, with initial contributions of $101 million; and the Nigeria Special Fund (NSF), created in 1976 by the Federal Government of Nigeria, with initial capital of $80 million.

While retaining its fully African character, the Bank admitted non-regional member countries in 1982. To become a member of the Bank Group, non-regional countries must first be members of the ADF.

From February 2003 to the end of 2013, the Bank operated from its temporary Relocation Agency in Tunis, Tunisia, due to the political turmoil in Côte d’Ivoire, before returning to its Abidjan headquarters in 2015. At that time, the Bank had almost 2,000 employees.

The Bank after 50 years

Fifty years on, in 2014, the African Development Bank Group marks its 50th anniversary.

In five decades, it has financed more than 4,100 operations for a continent that passed the one billion mark in 2010. At the time, it comprised 79 countries. And for several years now, it has enjoyed the highest AAA rating from the major financial rating agencies.

Since its creation, the Bank has kept pace with Africa, surviving each crisis, and expanding and diversifying its resources and actions year after year.

It has taken part in efforts to overcome conflict and professionalize the continent’s financial and political institutions. It has coordinated its activities with those of other partners in the fight against poverty: international financial institutions, governments and public development aid agencies, and non-governmental organizations.

It has increasingly designed its actions in consultation with representatives of local communities, so that the latter can play an active role in their own development. It has also emphasized the role of women, education, and structural reform. And it has supported major initiatives such as external debt relief for heavily indebted poor countries, regional integration, and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), for which the Bank is one of the prime contractors.

But nothing is complete. While growth and the restoration of macro-economic equilibrium have progressed in all African latitudes in recent decades, challenges remain.

The African Development Bank Group is relentlessly pursuing its founding mission: to serve the development of the whole of Africa.