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The next Afreximbank president faces “a tough choice” between persisting on a path of risk-taking growth or taking on board the concerns of ratings agencies such as Fitch, argued Bright Simons, the honorary vice president of an Accra-based think tank, in a column for Semafor.
Under outgoing President Benedict Oramah, Afreximbank has “pushed the envelope on how a development bank should think and act,” Simons wrote: It has taken risks like lending to Zimbabwe when no one else would and regularly lends without demanding any policy reforms, he said, resulting in remarkable growth.
But major global development actors such as the Paris Club of rich creditor nations want it to behave more like a classic multilateral development bank and restructure its loans. Whatever path the next president — due to be decided in a vote this month — decides to take, “it won’t be an easy choice,” wrote Simons.
