The African Development Bank’s governors have recommended that the financing institution immediately begin the rehabilitation of its headquarters in Abidjan and prepare for its return to the Ivorian city “once the conditions are in place.”
AfDB temporarily relocated its headquarters to the Tunisian capital, Tunis, in 2003, citing instability in Ivory Coast. But the resolution of the most recent political crisis in the African country, with the surrender of former Ivorian leader Laurent Gbagbo to current President Alassane Outtara earlier this month, prompted the bank to review its operations, particularly the possible return of its headquarters to Abidjan.
At a meeting last week in Washington, D.C., the AfDB Governors’ Consultative Committee “reaffirmed that the Bank’s headquarters remains in Abidjan and it welcomed the recent encouraging and positive developments in Côte d’Ivoire, which it felt would, in due course, lead to improved security, permitting the Bank to return to its headquarters,” AfDB said in an April 20 press release.
But the committee believed “the process of fully re-establishing security would likely take a while before things fully returned to normal.”
The governors also thanked the Tunisian government for its continued hospitality and endorsed additional investments to expand AfDB facilities in Tunis. They also agreed to change the schedule of reviews on the security situation in Abidjan from a yearly to a triennial basis.
“The Committee agreed, however, that the decision of a triennial review could be revisited at any time if the situation at Headquarters improved faster,” the news release added.
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