Sidi Ould Tah of Mauritania has been elected the ninth president of the African Development Bank Group (AfDB), succeeding Nigeria’s Akinwumi Adesina, whose second term ends this year.
The Bank announced Tah’s victory on Thursday following rounds of voting by its Board of Governors during the Annual Meetings held in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.
He will officially assume office on September 1, 2025.
Tah, 60, secured 76.18 percent of the vote, winning in just three rounds. He beat four other candidates, including Senegal’s Amadou Hott, Zambia’s Samuel Munzele Maimbo, Chad’s Abbas Mahamat Tolli, and Swazi Tshabalala of South Africa.
Maimbo came a distant second with 20.26 percent, while Hott followed with 3.55 percent.
To win, a candidate needed a majority of votes from both the Bank’s 81 member countries and its 54 African member states.
Born in Mederdra, Mauritania in 1964, Tah holds a doctorate in Economics from the University of Nice-Sophia-Antipolis in France and has completed executive programmes at Harvard and the London Business School.
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He previously served as Mauritania’s Minister of Economic Affairs and, most recently, as Director General of the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA), where he oversaw a quadrupling of the bank’s balance sheet and secured a AAA credit rating.
His campaign prioritised mobilising private capital, formalising Africa’s vast informal sector, and improving infrastructure to drive economic growth.
Tah also promised to “deepen partnerships with the private sector and enhance the Bank’s response to climate change.”
He pledged to “strengthen regional financial institutions, assert Africa’s financial independence on global markets, use population growth as a development lever and build climate change-resistant infrastructure.”
The AfDB plays a central role in funding infrastructure, energy, agriculture, and industrial development across the continent.
Tah’s election comes as Africa confronts rising debt, narrowing fiscal space, and the accelerating impact of climate change.
One of his early challenges may be navigating fallout from policy shifts under the Trump administration in the United States, including a possible $500 million cut to AfDB programmes supporting low-income countries.