Africa
African Bank moves temporarily from Abidjan to Tunis

afrol News, 19 February - At a meeting of directors of the African Development Bank (ADF), Africa's main financial institution, it was decided on "the temporary relocation of the Bank's operations to Tunis." ADF had earlier evacuated its Abidjan headquarters in response to the tensions in Côte d'Ivoire and has largely remained dysfunctional.

The board of governors of the African Development Bank held its emergency meeting during 17-18 February in Accra, Ghana under the chairmanship of Seydou Bouda, governor for Burkina Faso. On the agenda was the question of relocation, which had been discussed even before the current Ivorian crisis. There was strong advocacy for a permanent relocation to Tunis, but this had already been turned down at a vote in December last year.

Following hard pressure from Côte d'Ivoire, supported by South Africa and Ghana, yesterday's meeting "re-iterated the consensus reached" in December and decided against a permanent relocation to Tunis.

Due to the ongoing insecurity in Abidjan, the Ivorian economic capital, it was however decided to make Tunis offices the temporary headquarters of the Bank. Ghanaian governor Yaw Osafo-Maafo repeatedly stressed that "the Bank's headquarters remains in Abidjan" and "that any action taken in this regard should only be seen as temporary."

After the unrest in Abidjan turned violent and security for ADB staff could not longer be guaranteed, the Bank had sent approximately 400 staff members to Paris and Tunis "for business continuity and to maintain essential functions of the Bank." The remaining internationally-recruited staff had been evacuated to their home countries. 

According to the President of the Bank Group, Omar Kabbaj, the staff complement sent to Paris and Tunis was only enabling the Bank to "undertake essential business functions and to service existing projects." The Bank was "not able to carry out any new lending operations nor would it be in a position to launch new initiatives," Mr Kabbaj informed at the Accra meeting. 

The governors in a joint statement therefore recommended that the Bank should temporarily relocate its operations to its Tunis offices and "take as many staff as necessary to enable it to resume, as soon as possible, its operations in its regional member countries and to provide support to regional initiatives." They further stressed "the importance of the Bank reconstituting itself in a short time to enable it to deliver on its development mandate." 

The governor for Côte d'Ivoire however protested these recommendations, while the governors for Morocco and Libya abstained from expressing their views on the matter. The South African governor expressed his reservation on "the scale and costs of the proposed relocation exercise." 

Upon Ivorian protest and the South African bid for limiting the expenses, the directors agreed to "examine the budget for the relocation exercise with a view to reducing the costs, to the extent possible." 

They also advised that "efforts should be made to avoid investments that may be viewed as permanent in nature, such as the purchase of buildings," in an effort to calm Ivorian concerns the relocation could become permanent. Nonetheless, the Bank was to look more closely into plans to decentralise its administration to avoid similar crises in the future. 

The temporary relocation of the operations of the Bank were to be "reviewed not later than 180 days and every six months thereafter to assess the conditions that would permit the Bank's operations to return to Abidjan," the Accra meeting agreed.