What do you think of an African school of excellence?
Kordje Bedoumra, Chad’s candidate to the African Development Bank presidency, proposed this as part of his vision for Africa to train and produce more engineers like him, a civil engineer who worked his way up the institution’s corporate ladder before returning to his home country in 2012 to serve as minister of planning, economy and international cooperation, and now as minister of finance and budget.
The goal behind the school — which the former AfDB official envisions to be spread out across Africa’s geographic regions, and for which he suggests the bank’s involvement in its design, funding and creation — is twofold: contribute to the continent’s development needs, particularly in the areas where it has huge deficits such as electricity, transport and ICT; and address the needs of Africa’s labor market, in turn cutting the number of its unemployed youth.