Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), has stated that the financial organization will lend $500 million to women by 2022.
This comes as the bank’s Affirmative Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA) initiative raises $5 billion with the help of French President Emmanuel Macron and the G-7.
This information is contained in a statement released by Adesina on his official Twitter account on Sunday, May 22, 2022, in which he also stated that the bank gave out $483 million to financial institutions to lend to women businesses in 2021.
Adesina’s statement comes as the bank begins its Annual Meetings for 2022, and she praises the bank’s Board of Governors, Board of Directors, management, and all of its diligent employees.
He also congratulated the bank’s 81 shareholder countries for their unwavering trust and support.
“Our rapid COVID-19 response facility helped to stabilize African economies,” he stated. It trained 130,000 health professionals. It offered social security to around 30 million needy households. It provides consulting services to 300,000 small and medium-sized businesses.
“To address the food crisis caused by the Russia-Ukraine issue, our board of directors established a $1.5 billion Africa Emergency Food Production Facility last week, which will assist 20 million farmers in producing 38 million metric tons of food. The bank formed global alliances. “We came through.” The bank is collaborating globally to assist Africa in adapting to climate change. We are mobilizing $25 billion in support of Africa in collaboration with the Global Centre for Adaptation and former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.
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Our Affirmative Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA) initiative is raising $5 billion for women-owned businesses with the cooperation of President Emmanuel Macron and the G-7. We paid $483 million to banking institutions in 2021 to lend to women-owned enterprises. In 2022, we will lend $500 million to women.”
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the AfDB boss said the board had approved a crisis response facility of up to $10 billion based on rigorous risk assessments, and that it had launched a $3 billion COVID-19 social bond on global capital markets, the highest ever US dollar-denominated social bond in world history.
“The African Development Bank was named the best multilateral financial institution in the world by Global Finance in 2021,” he remarked. CGD ranked the African Development Fund second best in the world, ahead of all 28 concessional lending institutions in wealthy countries. We are Africa’s only AAA-rated financial institution. “We have an excellent and robust management and governance system.” “We have maintained our stellar AAA credit ratings by all major global credit rating agencies, who consistently praise our excellent risk management at the bank.” We provide excellent value to our African clients. Our work has impacted 335 million individuals over the last six years through our High five programs. We provide excellent value.”