Abidjan, Ivory Coast, May 30, 2025 (Lusa) - Cabo Verde will begin preparing a new cooperation framework with the African Development Bank (AfDB) to double funding and extend the term to ten years, the deputy prime minister and minister of finance said on Friday.
"It is a plan for the next five years, we will start the process of drafting this strategic instrument right away and we would like it to be even longer term," up to 10 years, to plan with stability, stronger and more disruptive projects, Olavo Correia told Lusa.
The minister was speaking on the sidelines of the AfDB's annual meetings, which end today in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
A 10-year programme "would be ideal, as a maximum horizon" for "effective change" with a transformative impact, in an alignment capable of accommodating adjustments, "with changes in the internal and external contexts," he added.
The signing is expected to take place with the new AfDB president, Sidi Ould Tah, elected on Thursday for a five-year term and who takes office in September.
The AfDB is one of Cabo Verde's main financiers, with a portfolio of five key projects supported with €70 million, including transport, new technologies and digitisation, modernisation of public administration and agriculture.
Olavo Correia would like to "double the portfolio," but "always with a focus on impact and results, not just volume," because “it is essential to place [support] in transformative areas” such as digital transition, the digital economy, and human capital formation.
The preparation of the next support framework should include an approach of ‘concentration’ of initiatives, to ‘achieve scale’ and avoid "the tyranny of small projects and have quick responses in the economy," he concluded.
The Cabo Verdean deputy prime minister said today that he hoped to inaugurate the relations that the country already has with the new president of the AfDB, Sidi Ould Tah, built up over the ten years he served as president of the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA).
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