The African Development Bank

Extract

The idea of setting up an all-African Development Bank was first expressed in a resolution passed at the All-African Peoples' Conference held in Tunis in January 1960. This was followed in 1961 by a unanimous resolution of the Economic Commission for Africa, requesting the Executive Secretary ‘to undertake a thorough study of the possibilities of establishing an African development bank’. The following year, E.C.A. established a committee of nine member states (Cameroun, Ethiopia, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Sudan, Tanganyika, and Tunisia), who were enjoined ‘to make all the necessary governmental and other contacts…to make complete and comprehensive studies into the financial and administrative structure of the proposed bank and into the nature and extent of its operations; to draft a charter… and to make recommendations on its location’.