Meet African Development Bank presidency candidates

FIVE candidates are running to become President of the African Development Bank in an election on Thursday during the lender’s annual meeting in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

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Tectonic shifts in global development finance with shrinking concessional funding, cuts to wealthy countries’ aid spending and whipsawing borrowing costs have made the bank’s $318 billion capital more crucial to Africa's development.

Who are they and what do they want to do?

Swazi Tshabalala Bajabulile

A banker with 30 years of experience, Tshabalala was, until October, AfDB’s senior vice president.

The South African, and sole female candidate, plans to transform the bank if she takes the helm.

“The internal structure of the institution ... doesn’t facilitate the right sort of sustained focus to be able to really deliver effectively on things like infrastructure,” she said. “We really should consolidate that.”

Amadou Hott

Senegal’s former economy minister has decades of banking experience from Lagos to London.