The African Development Bank (AfDB) has unveiled a comprehensive plan to reshape the continent’s financial landscape, as its new president, Dr. Sidi Ould Tah, delivered his inaugural address to the African Union (AU) Assembly of Heads of State on Sunday, 15 February 2026, in Addis Ababa.
Dr. Ould Tah, who assumed office as the AfDB’s ninth president on 1 September 2025, presented the New African Financial Architecture (NAFA) as a strategic framework to mobilise domestic resources and advance financial sovereignty. Speaking during the 39th AU Summit, themed “Ensuring the sustainable availability of safe water and sanitation systems to achieve the goals of Agenda 2063,” he argued that Africa’s challenge is not a lack of resources but an inefficient financial architecture.
“The problem is not a lack of resources. This is the architecture of risk and capital,” Dr. Ould Tah stated. He positioned NAFA as the central instrument to shift the continent from fragmentation to coordinated, systemic-scale financing, moving away from dependence on external capital.
NAFA is a core pillar of the AfDB Group’s renewed strategic vision, anchored in the Four Cardinal Points. These points aim to: unleash African capital by directing savings and institutional funds toward development; rebuild financial sovereignty through NAFA; transform the demographic dividend by supporting youth and women entrepreneurship and regional value chains; and build resilient, high-value infrastructure to accelerate industrialisation and economic integration.
“NAFA is not a slogan. It is a deliberate reorganization of the way Africa mobilizes, allocates, and deploys its capital for development,” the president emphasised.
The AU leaders, who also elected Burundian President Évariste Ndayishimiye as the 2026 Chairperson, formally welcomed Dr. Ould Tah’s strategic orientation. In a statement on the AfDB’s key initiatives, they congratulated him on his appointment, viewing it as a mandate to pursue Africa’s transformation agenda. The Assembly specifically endorsed the Four Cardinal Points and NAFA, requesting a detailed progress update on its operationalisation within six months.
The address signals a decisive push by the continent’s premier development bank to implement Agenda 2063 through a self-driven financial model. The next phase will focus on translating NAFA’s design into actionable mechanisms, a process now under the close scrutiny of African heads of state.
