By Giwa SHILE
African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) says former Nigerian President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and leading development economist, Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, will anchor the second Babacar Ndiaye Lecture scheduled for Bali, Indonesia.
The the bank’s Director and Global Head of Communications and Events Management Department, Obi Emekekwue, made the disclosure on Wednesday in Lagos.
Emekekwue said they would speak on: “Global Power Disequilibrium, Trade Wars and Implications for Africa” at the lecture which would take place on the sidelines of the World Bank-IMF Annual Meetings.
Ndiaye, who was President of the African Development Bank from 1985 to 1995, is being honoured for the creation of Afreximbank and other continental institutions, such as Shelter Afrique and the African Business Roundtable, he said in a statement.
Sachs, an American economist and public policy analyst, is Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, where he holds the title of University Professor, the highest rank Columbia bestows on its faculty.
He is also the Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General; Co-Founder and Director of the Millennium Promise and Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network among others.
Afreximbank is the foremost pan-African multilateral financial institution devoted to financing and promoting intra- and extra-African trade.
The bank was established in October 1993 by African governments, African private and institutional investors, and non-African investors.
Its two basic constitutive documents are the Establishment Agreement, which gives it the status of an international organisation, and the Charter, which governs its corporate structure and operations.
Since 1994, it has approved about 60 billion dollars in credit facilities for African businesses, including about 8.5 billion dollars in 2017.
Afreximbank has total assets of 11.9 billion dollars as at Dec. 31, 2017 and is rated BBB+ (GCR), Baa1 (Moody’s), and BBB- (Fitch).
The bank is headquartered in Cairo, Egypt.
