AFRICA – The African Development Bank (AfDB) and European Investment Bank (EIB) have signed a joint partnership action plan highlighting their strengthened cooperation and mutual development priorities and a strong shared emphasis on boosting public and private sector investment in Africa.
The Joint Action Plan enables the two financial institutions to grow a shared pipeline of bankable projects around key complementary themes to which each institution would bring their comparative advantage.
These themes are: climate action and environmental sustainability; transformative large-scale quality infrastructure investment; Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure and services; financial inclusion with a gender lens aimed at the empowerment of girls and women; education and training; and the health sector.
“It is crucial that more multinational development banks and other development finance institutions commit to closer and stronger collaboration, such as seen through this Joint Action Plan between the AfDB and the EIB, in order to more efficiently and effectively support our regional member countries during these troubling times. Sustainable economic growth and security in regions facing particular challenges, such as the Sahel and Horn of Africa, are our top priority,” AfDB acting senior vice president Bajabulile Swazi Tshabalala.
“Together, the EIB and AfDB will enhance cooperation and engagement with African partners to ensure that Africa emerges from the health, social and economic challenges of Covid-19 to an even brighter 21st century”
Thomas Ostros – Vice President, EIB
Thomas Östros, EIB vice president, “The Action Plan signed with the African Development Bank today demonstrates the firm commitment of the European Investment Bank, the EU Bank, to delivering investment that makes a real difference to Africa. Together, the EIB and AfDB will enhance cooperation and engagement with African partners to ensure that Africa emerges from the health, social and economic challenges of Covid-19 to an even brighter 21st century.”
Over the past 5 years, the shared portfolio of the two institutions has grown to €3.4 billion, leveraging investment totaling €10.2 billion for 26 projects across the continent.
Recent cooperation to increase venture capital financing for innovation and technology companies through the Boost Africa initiative and commitment to the Desert to Power programme highlights how public banks accelerate financing in priority policy areas.
In recent years the EIB and AfDB have jointly supported clean energy, water, transport and private sector projects across the continent, from Morocco in the north, Senegal in the West, Kenya in the East and Zambia in the South, and elsewhere across Africa.
In the Sahel region, both AfDB and EIB are financing climate and energy initiatives such as Desert-to-Power and the Great Green Wall Initiative.
The African Development Bank Group and the European Investment Bank have a long history of cooperation, framed by their relationship as Multilateral Development Banks and a Memorandum of Understanding on an Enhanced Strategic Partnership, signed in 2005, between the EIB, the AfDB and the European Commission.
They have also signed a Procedural Framework for co-financed public sector projects.
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