Mauritania’s Sidi Ould Tah Elected President of African Development Bank

Sidi Ould Tah of Mauritania has been elected as the new president of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Group. The announcement was made on Thursday following several rounds of voting by the AfDB Board of Governors during the Bank’s Annual Meetings held in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.

Tah will take office on September 1, 2025, becoming the ninth president of the Bank. He succeeds Nigeria’s Dr Akinwumi Adesina, whose decade-long tenure concludes this year.

Tah won the election ahead of four other candidates: Amadou Hott of Senegal, Samuel Maimbo of Zambia, Abbas Mahamat Tolli of Chad, and Swazi Tshabalala of South Africa.

The AfDB Board of Governors, made up of finance ministers and central bank governors from the institution’s 81 member countries, was responsible for the election process.