Fact Box: 52nd Annual General Meeting of African Development Bank (AfDB)

May 22, 2017

The 52nd Annual General Meeting of African Development Bank (AfDB) is being held at Gandhinagar in Gujarat from May 22-26, 2017. This is for the first time that this meeting is being held in India. This meeting is expected to be attended by some 4500 delegates including the finance ministers and central bank governors of AfDBs members and non-member countries.
About African Development Bank (AfDB)
African Development Bank Group (AfDB) also known as Banque Africaine de Developpment (BAD) was founded in 1964 with a mission to fight poverty and improve living conditions of the people of African continent by promoting investment in government and private capital in development projects. The bank is made of three entities viz. African Development Bank, African Development Fund, and Nigeria Trust Fund. Its headquarters are at Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast). The motto of the bank is “Building today, a better Africa tomorrow” and currently, it has total 78 members including India. India had joined this bank in 1983. Its unit currency (for accounting purpose) is XUA under the ISO 4217 standard currency code.
India and other Non-African Members
India is a non-African member country for this bank. Some other non-African member countries include US, Japan, Germany, Canada, France, China etc. Nigeria is the largest country in terms of voting powers at the African Development Bank, followed by United States.
Significance of the meet
So far, the annual conferences of the bank have held within African continent only. For the first time in 2017, the bank is holding its first annual conference outside Africa at Gandhinagar. This event is to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This meet is seen as a logical follow up to the India Africa Forum summit which was held in 2015 in Delhi.