Sidi Ould Tah, a contender for the presidency of the African Development Bank (AfDB), has said the institution urgently needs to strengthen financial partnerships with Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and mobilize capital from African pension funds as the continent grapples with a widening development financing gap.
Tah noted that while the AfDB currently lends approximately $10 billion annually, Africa’s infrastructure and development needs surpass $100 billion per year.
According to him, this can only be addressed through diversified funding sources and strategic capital alliances.
“The Gulf region has excess liquidity and operates multiple development finance institutions offering capital at low cost,” Tah said during an interview. “We are not fully tapping into this potential, despite growing interest from GCC sovereign wealth funds to invest in Africa.”
The former Mauritanian Finance Minister is one of five candidates vying to succeed Akinwumi Adesina, whose term as AfDB President concludes soon. The election is scheduled for May 29 with candidates from South Africa, Senegal, Zambia and Chad also in the race.
However, South Africa’s Swazi Tshabalala and Senegal’s Amadou Hott are seen as leading contenders.
Tah’s proposal includes leveraging sovereign wealth from countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which collectively manage assets exceeding $4 trillion.
He also called for domestic resource mobilization, saying that African pension funds hold more than $2 trillion but allocate most of it to foreign markets.
He proposed that the AfDB structure co-investment models with both Gulf sovereign entities and African institutional investors to mitigate risk and unlock long-term financing.
“Given my background and my network in the Arab financial ecosystem, I am positioned to bring fresh strategic capital into Africa’s development agenda,” he said.
While calling for stronger GCC-Africa financing ties, Tah maintained that collaboration with traditional development finance partners such as France’s Agence Française de Développement should not be sidelined.
He said a hybrid approach that includes Western and Arab financiers is critical to scaling impact across key sectors like infrastructure, healthcare and climate adaptation.
In addition, Tah advocated for consolidation among Africa’s credit guarantee institutions, which he described as fragmented and undercapitalized.
He proposed the formation of a pan-African guarantee agency to improve credit enhancement, citing inefficiencies and overlapping mandates among existing institutions.
“Most of these agencies are too small and are not covering enough countries. Consolidation is essential to create the scale and credibility needed to unlock private sector financing,” he said.
AfDB has a subscribed capital base of around $400 billion and remains a key development finance institution on the continent.
