Delivery: The harder test for AfDB chief Sidi Ould Tah

After a year in office, Sidi Ould Tah has begun to reshape how the African Development Bank (AfDB) raises money and prepares projects. Delivery, however, is the harder test. On May 29, 2025, shortly after his election as the ninth president of the AFDB Group, Dr Tah stood before the Bank's governors and guests at the Sofitel Abidjan Hôtel Ivoire. His expression gave little away. Stoic, almost solemn, he thanked Africa, the Bank's partners and those gathered in the room, then said simply: 'Let's go to work now, I'm ready!' On September 1, he took office. A year on, the question is whether the initiatives of his first 12 months amount to a coherent architecture for finance and delivery, and whether that architecture can produce results. He inherited a financially strong institution, with $318bn in authorised capital and triple-A credit ratings. Much of that capital is callable, underpinning the Bank's creditworthiness and lending capacity. The setting beyond the Bank is much less forgiving. AfDB puts the annual shortfall through 2030 in transport, education, energy and productivity-enhancing technology at $402.2bn; the wider gap in financing the Sustainable Development Goals is greater still. S&P Global Ratings estimates that rated African sovereigns face about $90bn in principal repayments on external debt in 2026. The Bank's 10-Year Strategy for 2024–33 remains its strategic horizon. Within it, Dr Tah's Four Cardinal Points – unlocking Africa's capital power; rebuilding its financial sovereignty; turning demographics into a dividend; and building resilient infrastructure and competitive value chains – set the immediate order of work and the basis for greater selectivity. The Bank governors endorsed them in May 2026. The first-year record is strongest on capital mobilisation and financial sovereignty; demographics and infrastructure present the sterner test. Between 12 million and 15 million young Africans enter the labour market each year, while only about 3 million formal jobs are created. Little more than 100 days into Dr Tah's presidency, the 17th replenishment of the African Development Fund was completed. The Fund, which provides grants and concessional loans to 37 low-income countries, secured a record $11bn for 2026–28 representing 23 percent above the previous round, though still well short of the earlier $25bn ambition and without a pledge from the US. The 2026 African Economic Outlook estimates that Africa's commercial banks, pension funds, insurers, sovereign wealth funds and central banks hold assets worth more than $4trillion. Yet institutional investors allocate less than 2.7 percent of their assets to infrastructure and other productive sectors on the continent. Dr Tah's New African Financial Architecture for Development is an attempt to turn that diagnosis into policy. It has brought the continent's leading financial institutions together around an 11-point Abidjan Consensus, adopted in April, covering project preparation, domestic capital mobilisation and risk-sharing. The first implementation report, due at the African Union's coordination meeting in October, will show whether agreement is beginning to yield transactions. The Bank's investment in African Trade and Investment Development Insurance(Atidi), gives the architecture its clearest institutional expression. On May 22, the Board approved up to $125m in equity. By July, Atidi reported that the Bank's participation had increased fivefold. Dr Tah wants that backing to lift Atidi's annual guarantee from about $3bn to $10bn. Africa50 illustrates the less visible work required before capital can be deployed. The Alliance for Green Infrastructure in Africa Project Development Fund predates Dr Tah's presidency and reached its first close in August 2025. A year later, Italy's Cassa Depositi e Prestiti and France's Proparco committed a further $50m. The fund is seeking $400m for feasibility studies, design and transaction structuring. One year is too soon to gauge satisfaction, but long enough to judge the direction. Dr Tah has begun to connect capital mobilisation, risk-sharing, project preparation and internal reform. The record may justify a cautious smile, but satisfaction must await delivery. Elsewhere, three recent approvals range across skills, digital connectivity and industrial production. In Ghana, a $71.55m grant is expected to train 28,000 people and create about the same number of direct and indirect jobs over four years. In Nigeria, a $200m Bank loan for Project BRIDGE forms part of an $800m sovereign package within a wider public-private financing plan estimated at $2bn. The project would lay 90,000km of open-access fibre, connect all 774 local government areas and establish cross-border links with Benin, Cameroon, Niger and Chad. In Morocco, the Bank has approved a €100m loan for an integrated battery plant and will seek to arrange up to €141m more. Their worth will be decided by the training, connections, local production and jobs they eventually deliver. Same test applies The same test applies inside the Bank, where Tah's proposed reform of the operating model is more than an administrative exercise. The promise of a more agile institution, closer to member countries and the people it serves, will count for little unless authority and responsibility for delivery move with it. Decisions need to be taken closer to countries, while the mobilisation of private capital must begin in project design rather than after approval. The Bank's own evaluations show why this matters. A 2025 review found that a decade of decentralisation had delivered only 53% of its intended outcomes, with shortfalls in authority, staffing and process. A later study reached an equally uncomfortable conclusion: the selectivity framework had changed how projects were described more than what the Bank financed, in part because staff were still rewarded for volume and approvals. Reform will count only if projects are prepared and procured more quickly, first disbursements come sooner, portfolio performance improves and every dollar of Bank exposure draws in more outside capital. Publishing those measures consistently would allow governors, investors and citizens to judge reform by evidence rather than intent or announcements. The measure The achievement will be measured when electricity reaches a home and keeps a factory running; when fibre carries a small business into a larger market; when an African mineral is processed on the continent before export; when a pension fund earns a sound return from an African asset; and when a young person finds dependable work in the industries these investments make possible.