Presidential duel

A deadlocked election for the Bank's new leader is holding back international money

'No white smoke yet', South Africa's Finance Minister Trevor Manuel joked with a crowd of journalists after five rounds of voting for the African Development Bank president on 18 May in Abuja. Electing a new ADB president may seem as opaque a process as a papal conclave. Yet the smiles faded when the Bank's shareholders realised that the deadlock between the two candidates still in the race, Nigeria's Olabisi Ogunjobi and Rwanda's Donald Kaberuka, could throw the ADB into a new crisis after a decade of stabilisation and triple-A ratings under Morocco's Omar Kabbaj.

Article Tags:
South Africa, Nigeria, Olabisi Ogunjobi, Rwanda, Donald Kaberuka, Morocco, Omar Kabbaj, Côte d'Ivoire, Tunisia, United States, Western favourite or Africa's choice, Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Ghana, K.Y. Amoako, Hilary Benn, Olusegun Obasanjo, Kenya, Imagination and institutional memory, Uganda, Gabon, Casimir Oye Mba, China, India, Spain, Francophonie

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