NDAMU SANDU
African Development Bank (AfDB) president Akinwumi Adesina arrived in Zimbabwe Monday on a two-day visit to help the Southern African country resolves its external debt.
The visit comes five months after Adesina accepted a request by Zimbabwe to serve as the country’s arrears clearance and debt resolution champion among international financial institutions and bilateral creditors.
Adesina will on Tuesday meet President Emmerson Mnangagwa and other government officials, including Finance and Economic Development minister Mthuli Ncube, who is also Zimbabwe’s Governor on the Bank Group’s board of Governors.
Discussions will focus on potential areas of technical assistance that the AfDB will provide to the Zimbabwean government, the Abidjan-headquartered bank said in a statement.
Adesina will meet with several African and G7 ambassadors and representatives of international financial institutions accredited to Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe is the only regional member country of the AfDB currently under sanctions from the bank and other multilateral financial institutions due to debt arrears amounting to over US$2.6bn.
Adesina told Business Times in May that the bank was working with its shareholders and bilateral partners such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to help Zimbabwe extricate itself from the debt the same way they had assisted Sudan and Somalia.
“When a part of the body hurts, every part of the body hurts. We want Zimbabwe to be reenergised. We want Zimbabwe’s mines working, we want Zimbabwe’s agriculture working. We want skilled people going back to Zimbabwe,” Adesina said.
He said Zimbabwe used to be the breadbasket of the region and “it’s in everybody’s interest to have a revived, renewed and energised Zimbabwe”.
“So we are committed as that bank to that. We will walk with our partners. We will walk with the World Bank. We will walk with the IMF, we will walk with all the bilateral partners. My vice president [Yacin Fal] just went there,” Adesina said.
The African Development Bank has run the US$145.8m Zimbabwe Multi-Donor Trust Fund (the ZimFund) from 2010 through June this year.
The ZimFund has been an important source of financial support for the country’s energy, water and sanitation infrastructure.
The seven ZimFund financiers are the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Switzerland.
Zimbabwe is in debt distress with an external debt of over US$14bn.
Zimbabwe owes the AfDB US$600m and US$1.5bn to the World Bank.
