European Bank for Reconstruction and Development weighs sub-Saharan move

BRUSSELS — The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is considering a foray into sub-Saharan Africa. The announcement came after the board of governors gave the green light this week for the lender to study whether it should expand its operations in the African continent. Meeting in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, for the bank’s annual meeting, the governors backed preparatory work on its 2021-2025 strategic plan, which will be signed off next May. EBRD president Suma Chakrabarti told reporters Wednesday the process will include analysis of “potential future options for limited and incremental expansion into new countries of operations beyond the geographic scope of the Bank’s mandate … such as a select number of African and other countries that are closely integrated with the Bank’s present geographical scope.” Latest expansion The London-based bank, owned by 67 countries plus the European Union and European Investment Bank, opened in 1991 as a way to build Central and Eastern Europe after the Cold War. It has since expanded to work in 38 countries, including Mongolia, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, the West Bank, and Gaza. Last year, it invested €9.5 billion in 295 projects, mainly finance to the private sector. Chakrabarti declined to single out countries for the latest possible expansion, saying there were a number of “open questions to be debated” with the board, including whether the EBRD’s approach would work best in post-conflict countries in sub-Saharan Africa or those where government institutions were better established. The EBRD president, whose second term ends next year, has championed the idea of a move into sub-Saharan Africa, telling the Guardian last year “the biggest need there is private sector development which is what we do.” But he failed to get the idea off the ground at last year’s annual meeting amid a lack of consensus from shareholders, and there are signs that still not everyone is convinced. The governor of the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina told GlobalCapital this week that EBRD should focus on “Bosnia, not Africa” and in April, Reuters reported some shareholders’ concerns about moving into areas where the African Development Bank and World Bank are already present. Chakrabarti told reporters in Sarajevo that EBRD would seek “complementarity and balance” with existing players, such as the AfDB and EIB, pointing to greater co-financing with the latter in recent years. Critical time for European banks The move comes at a critical time for European development finance institutions. The EIB and European Commission are tussling for influence over the bloc’s external lending, while France has championed a wise persons group to issue recommendations by October, in time for the end of the EU’s 2021-2027 budget talks, on how the commission, EIB, EBRD and national development banks can better coordinate. In this climate, San Bilal, head of the economic transformation and trade program at the think tank ECDPM, sees the EBRD considering a move into sub-Saharan Africa as an attempt to show its added-value. He said one virtue of the EBRD was its assessment of projects’ broader impact on countries’ business environment and reform efforts. ”For the EBRD it is not enough to have a project that is good for development and that is financially viable, it also has to have some kind of systemic impact,” Bilal said. “That’s their transition impact assessment that they were doing for Eastern European countries. And that kind of approach is interesting because in Africa that is also the kind of investments that one is looking for.” “What the EIB does not do and is not really equipped to do at this stage is to look at the systemic impact of some of their projects,” Bilal added. “The [EBRD] have a department looking at systemic economic impact and another one looking just at the projects, and each project is evaluated on these two criteria.” Mikaela Gavas from the Center for Global Development think tank said the possible move into sub-Saharan Africa was a “natural evolution” for the EBRD, which she said is “quite constrained by its mandate and its focus on transition,” fostering and sustaining market economies. “I think it sees it as an opportunity to start expanding [its private-sector-development expertise] into other countries, where the needs are pretty substantial,” she said. “I think it’s them rethinking their relevance, their responsiveness to a rapidly changing landscape.”