A diplomatic row is brewing as South Africa breaks ranks with the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) over next year’s election of the president of the African Development Bank (AfDB).
Sadc’s preferred candidate is Zambia’s Samuel Maimbo while South African finance minister Enoch Godongwana announced this week that Pretoria was backing Swazi Tshabalala, the bank’s former vice-president who resigned this week to concentrate on her candidacy.
A South African national, Tshabalala joined the bank in 2018 as vice-president for finance and chief finance officer and was appointed as senior vice-president in November 2021. She has previously worked for top companies including Transnet, MTN, Standard Bank, SAA and Tiger Brands.
Her resignation this week immediately followed South Africa’s announcement that it will lobby member countries with voting powers, including Nigeria, to back Tshabalala’s candidacy.
Outgoing AfDB president Nigerian Akinwumi Adesina steps down at the end of his second five-year term in 2025 and is believed to be backing Senegal’s Amadou Hott. The election takes place at the bank’s May AGM in Ivory Coast next year.
Godongwana told the Sunday Times that there was no requirement for member countries to back a candidate endorsed by their regional bodies.
Pretoria believes that South African and Nigeria were bound by a previous deal which saw SA backing Adesina’s first election and his re-election for a second term in return for the West African superpower’s support for a South African candidate when Adesina leaves office.
But an insider said those who reached the deal in 2015 were no longer in positions of authority given the changes in government in both countries, hence Nigerian Adesina’s backing of a Senegalese candidate. Nigeria’s support is key as it is the biggest African shareholder in the bank, followed by South Africa. The Nigerian finance ministry had not responded to questions at the time of publication.
The Sunday Times has learnt that the biggest fallout was expected between member countries of Sadc after ministers in the region chose Zambia’s Maimbo as the region’s candidate at an August meeting in Zimbabwe.
Highly placed insiders told the Sunday Times that South Africa argued for a rotational system given that the last AfDB president from the region, who was elected 44 years ago, was Zambian.
“But for some strange reason, Sadc followed a new process where they interviewed candidates and they sprang this up on people at the last minute,” said a insider.
“The South African candidate was interviewed. She (Tshabalala) did really well in that interview and she outshone everybody. But they were like no, there is some other technical process that we used which therefore means that the Zambian candidate is number one, the South African candidate is number two and the Tanzanian candidate is number three.
“When South Africans inquired about this technical process, the response was that they reviewed the profiles and CVs and on the basis of that, the South African candidate becomes number two.
“They made a recommendation to the council of foreign ministers. In that council, South Africa said according to Sadc custom, we follow the principle of rotation and even on your own technical assessment, this is what you have to think of — the candidate is female, your own reports as Sadc criticise the fact that in leadership positions there are not enough women within Sadc and on the continent.
“This is from a Sadc report that we have just adopted. Here’s an opportunity to endorse a candidate who is female and yet you reject her. Third she’s the vice-president of the bank [before her resignation this week], she is next in line to succeed, so logically she is best placed to be there.”
Insiders said the SA government would argue for any other candidate who is not Zambian should Tshabalala’s name not be accepted. However, Sadc had “bulldozed” Maimbo’s name.
“This is not the first time that Zambia have done this to SA. With the International Court of Justice candidate as well (Dire Tladi) they did the same thing. They contested us when Sadc had endorsed our candidate.
“I think it was unanimous on our candidate and they still pursued the ICJ candidature right up until the last moment at the ICJ courts and they lost,” said a senior government official.
Godongwana would not say which countries had agreed to back Tshabalala’s name, only saying he would soon hold formal talks with his Nigerian counterpart with the aim of lobbying the western African state to back Tshabalala.
Adesina is said to be backing Hott, who is yet to receive a nomination from his home country Senegal. Other contenders include Tanzanian Frannie Léautier and Abbas Mahamat Tolli from Chad.
The bank, with headquarters in Abidjan, raises funds for development projects in Africa. It has a shareholder capital of US $318bn. The bank’s biggest shareholders in Africa include Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt and Morocco. Other major shareholders include the UK, US, Japan, Germany, China, France, Italy, Sweden, Canada and Switzerland.
