Ghana in line to host AfDB Annual Meetings, as India becomes venue for 2017 edition
On Friday May 27, 2016, the 51st Annual Meetings of the African Development Bank (AfDB) ended in Lusaka, Zambia. The city of Ahmedabad, in Gujurat state, India was announced as the next venue for the 2017 edition.
Ghana will be hosting the Meetings in five years.
The Lusaka Meetings no doubt put to the fore the challenges, opportunities and realities on the continent and what can be done to address the major issues that should be tackled to take out of poverty the continent’s more than 500 million citizens, and to switch on and keep the lights glowing for the over 600 million living in darkness by providing electricity.
The meeting also discussed the importance of turning agriculture into agribusiness, empower and provide financing for women and create jobs for the continent’s teeming youth and stirring the knack for innovation among the continent’s talented young people.
The provision of energy as the Meetings proposed should target industrialization of the continent, with an aim of taking Africa up from the bottom of the global trade value chain by adding value to natural resources instead of exporting them raw.
The Meetings also touched on climate change and what the Bank has set out to do to tackle the phenomenon. The Bank has announced it is investing $5 billion annually till 2020 in that regard.
The Meetings, which bring together think tanks, civil society, technocrats, politicians and journalists from all over the world is always a major platform to discuss the continent’s challenges, pains, failures and successes. It is always a place to share ideas and to propose new ways of doing business in Africa and the way forward.
After the next Meetings in Ahmedabad, India, from May 22-26, 2017, it will be South Korea’s turn in Busan from May 21-25, 2018, and then Malabo, in Equatorial Guinea from May 20-24, 2019. The Meetings would then return to Abidjan from May 25-29, 2020, Abidjan hosted the 2015 edition and then it will be the turn of Accra, Ghana from May 24-28, 2021.
By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi, in Lusaka, Zambia
Copyright © 2016 by Creative Imaginations Publicity
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