The African Development Fund (ADF or “the Fund”) is the African Development Bank Group’s main vehicle for assisting Africa’s poorest countries. The Fund is a longstanding partnership between donor countries and recipient African countries and an important source of financial and technical assistance for some 40 low-income countries (LICs). Its past successes reflect the particular combination of assets the Fund brings together: not only financial resources, but technical depth across a wide range of economic and social issues, country knowledge, and fiduciary and legal capacity. All of these elements have been brought to bear in the Bank Group’s policy engagements with Africa’s LICs, which over four decades helped spur growth and policy reform across Africa.

As we now enter an era that looks very different from the one in which the ADF was created almost 45 years ago, there are major shifts in the international development finance landscape that have created new challenges and opportunities for Africa’s LICS as they try to access external finance for their development priorities. Specifically, the international community has set very ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that bring together economic, social and environmental priorities. These goals are ambitious, and they demand equal ambition in using the “billions” in ODA and in available development resources to attract, leverage, and mobilize “trillions” in investments of all kinds: public and private, national and global, in both capital and capacity. This will require making the best possible use of each dollar from every source, drawing in and increasing available public resources as well as private sector finance and investment.

The SDGs fit accurately with Africa’s priorities for the next two decades and achieving them remains an unfinished business for many ADF countries. Coupled with Agenda 2063, the continent’s own development vision, the SDGs allow ADF countries to aspire to fulfil major development objectives in the coming years. This is especially challenging as it will necessitate the mobilization of adequate financial resources (including concessional ones), and their effective deployment for poverty reduction, the transformation of economies, and the creation of the conditions for inclusive and sustainable prosperity.

The ADF State Participants, Donor Countries and Management have agreed to create an ADF Working Group with the aim to facilitate discussions on innovations to address structural issues on the future of ADF and how it can most effectively and efficiently contribute to the developing agenda of Africa’s LICs, which are its most vulnerable states.