US Treasury honours African Dev’t Bank for Mali-Senegal road project

The US Treasury has given its Inaugural Development Impact Honours Award to the African Development Bank (AfDB).

The award, which was received by AfDB’s President Donald Kaberuka in Washington D.C, was bestowed on one of the Bank’s Regional multinational projects – the Mali-Senegal Road project.

The US Treasury launched the award for multilateral development Banks in 2011 and it focuses on education, environment/climate, food security, health, infrastructure, private sector, women and girls.

The Road Improvement and Transport Facilitation on the Bamako-Dakar Corridor Project, which won the award was approved by the Bank on December 21, 2005 with a loan of $83 million and a grant of $11.251 million.

The project is designed to help strengthen economic integration and sub-regional cooperation in West Africa – to open up the hinterland countries of the sub-region and to establish a permanent highway link through the south between Mali and Senegal and to remove constraints on movement so as to reduce overall transport costs and foster economic exchanges between the two countries.

“I am truly honoured and humbled to receive on behalf of the African Development Bank the Treasury’s Inaugural Development Impact Honours,” Mr Kaberuka said at the award ceremony in Washington D.C., chaired by the US Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, according to an AfDB statement issued June 7, 2012.

The African Highway is also part of the short term Action Plan of NEPAD, President Kaberuka said.

By Ekow Quandzie