A Report Card for the African Development Bank: Todd Moss
When Donald Kaberuka became president of the African Development Bank five years ago, he faced daunting tasks, including defining a mission for an institution that many dismissed as irrelevant.
My guest on this week’s show is Todd Moss, vice president and senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. Todd directed a working group that, in 2006, issued six recommendations, three each for bank management and the bank’s shareholder countries. Now, Todd has issued a report card that grades the bank and its shareholders on each of the recommendations.
Todd starts by explaining the basics of how the African Development Bank works. Like other multilateral development banks (notably the World Bank), it uses capital and promises of support by shareholder countries to raise and lend money for development projects, partly at concessional interest rates. During the 2008-09 financial crisis, the AfDB accelerated disbursements to African countries to cushion the impact of the crisis, at the request of the world’s leading donor countries.