How the Islamic Development Bank is financing projects in Africa.

Dr. Mansur Muhtar is the vice president of operations at the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB). A former minister of finance of Nigeria, he previously served as executive director on the board of the World Bank Group as well as the African Development Bank. In September, he led an IsDB delegation to the UN General Assembly. In this interview with Africa Renewal's Kingsley Ighobor, he discusses the activities of IsDB in Africa and his vision for Africa's development. These are excerpts from the interview.

The Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) is headquartered in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Tell us about its work in Africa?

Basically, we are a development finance institution. We provide loans and credits to member countries to support infrastructure development-social and physical infrastructure. In addition, the institution supports private sector development, and this is very important for African countries.

We have 27 African countries out of 57 member countries.

In terms of resources, since its inception in 1975 up to about the end of June [2022], the IsDB has advanced financing to African countries to the tune of $65 billion, including about $20 billion for trade-financing activities. But a lot of the financing also went into projects in sectors such as health, education, road transport, energy and so on.

Can you provide some examples of such projects in Africa?

Since the beginning of this year, the IsDB has approved projects in excess of $1 billion in Africa. For example, we financed the upgrading of roads in Uganda, the Watershed Water Resources Mobilization Project in Senegal, the Hydro Agricultural Development Project in Cote d'Ivoire, the provision of maternal and neonatal healthcare services in Mauritania and the development of technical and vocational education in Guinea

How do you deal with the private sector?

Our trade financing arm supports trade among African countries and between African countries and countries in other regions.

We also provide lines of credit and financing equity investment, as well as lines of finance to commercial banks in Africa for on-lending to small and medium enterprises. We have an arm that deals with the provision of insurance to mitigate the risk of borrowing and to encourage the flow of investment and expansion of trade.

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