The election of a new president is expected to preoccupy delegates at the African Development Bank annual meeting in Abidjan, Ivory Coast this week.

Eight candidates are in the running to succeed outgoing Rwandan national Donald Kaberuka during the election to be held on Thursday.

The start of the meetings on Monday will, however, be marked by the admission of South Sudan as the Bank’s 80th member, strengthening its bid to join the East African Community, after the country complied with the Bank’s criteria at the end of last month.

The meeting, whose theme is “Africa and New Global Landscape” is also expected to set the continent’s positions on financing for development, sustainable development goals and climate change. The positions will be presented during respective international conferences in Addis Ababa, New York and Paris later this year.

Acting vice-president and chief economist Steve Kayizzi-Mugerwa said the three conferences in July, September and December respectively will bear heavily on the future of the continent.

“Africa plays a key role in each of these events. Its voice will be heard, and we will strengthen that voice in Abidjan,” Mr Kayizzi-Mugerwa said last week.

The person to project that voice will be picked in a closed session of bank governors and directors and their alternates.

Sources familiar with continental diplomacy, however say that the decision may have been made miles away, days earlier, through horse trading among the voting blocs in capitals like Addis Ababa where the African Union and the Economic Commission for Africa have their headquarters.

The candidates — Akinwumi Adesina of Nigeria, Sufian Ahmed of Ethiopia, Jaloul Ayed of  Tunisia, Kordjé Bedoumra of Chad, Cristina Duarte of Cape Verde, Samura Kamara of Sierra Leone, Thomas Sakala of Zimbabwe and Birama Sidibe of Mali, all boast impressive academic and executive credentials.

Four of them are serving government ministers (two for finance, one for agriculture and the other for foreign affairs) while three others can be considered AfDB insiders, having held top positions in the bank before branching out to other undertakings of similar stature.

Two of the candidates boast vast private sector experience with the likes of Citibank and Shelter Afrique, the continent’s housing financier.  

In contests like these, however, geopolitical considerations like whether it is time for AfDB to have its first female president in Ms Duarte or to have the first president from Anglophone Africa from among Mr Sakala, Mr Ahmed and Mr Adesina come to the fore, to the extent that no one bets on a frontrunner.

East Africa is understood to have thrown its weight behind Mr Ahmed despite the unlikelihood of the region having a second successive man in charge at Abidjan after Dr Kaberuka.

Kenya in particular, committed to support the Ethiopian candidate when Ethiopia stepped down to allow Nairobi to host the World Trade Organisation ministerial conference in November this year.

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Nigeria, with its unrivalled clout by virtue of being AfDB’s biggest overall contributor, is backing Dr Adesina. President Muhammadu Buhari has sent emissaries to Ecowas chairman, Ghana’s President, John Dramani Mahama, and South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma in the hope of testing the resolve of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) — Tanzania is a member — governors to support Mr Sakala.

Dr Kamara is also courting the support of Ecowas countries while Mr Sidibe’s application was sponsored by 11 regional members from different blocs.  

Mrs Duarte, a champion of institutional reform at the bank, has the backing of private sector lobbies as well as the non-regional members of AfDB whom sections of the Nigerian media have accused of ganging up against the country’s candidates in the past.

Former Cape Verde president Pedro Pires has written in support of Mrs Duarte, who describes her leadership style as “firm and participatory.”

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Tunisian Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa has said that the country’s support of Mr Ayed’s candidature is part of its new diplomacy targeting leadership of multilateral institutions in Africa and the Mediterranean as well as partnerships with Asia.

Whoever emerges winner will be determined through a vote by each country’s finance minister. The ministers are assigned voting power depending on a country’s shareholding in AfDB, where Nigeria leads African members with 9.256 per cent of the vote. It is followed by nine other heavyweight countries: Egypt, South Africa, Algeria, Morocco, Ivory Coast, Libya, Zimbabwe and Kenya in that order.

These 10 countries, without the geopolitical intrigues, can garner more than half of the 59.722 per cent vote held by the 54 regional members that a candidate needs to be elected president.

A candidate would also need to marshal support from the 26 non-regionals — countries from outside Africa that have shareholding in AfDB. In this category, the US leads with a voting bloc of  6.551 per cent followed by Japan, Germany, Canada and France. The five countries control more than half of the 40.278 per cent that a candidate needs to be declared a winner.

But matters are not so straight forward, with no candidate having won the election in the first round of voting.

“A lot of horse trading ensues after the first round which often sees outliers gain prominence with every round,” said The EastAfrican columnist Jenerali Ulimwengu, who is conversant with the institution’s workings.

When Dr Kaberuka was elected for the first term in 2005, he enjoyed broad support among non-regional members as African countries supported the Nigerian candidate Bisi Ogunjobi during the annual meeting held in Abuja.

The stalemate was broken two months later during a special general meeting in Tunis.

A stalemate ensues when none of the two leading candidates secures the double majority votes of regionals and non-regionals and the entire membership. This forces another election before the term of the incumbent ends, in this case August 31 this year.

A candidate’s personality, however, also comes to bear. Mr Ayed is said to have wowed the panel during discussions on his vision for the Bank as did Mr Sakala and Mrs Duarte. Mr Adesina, who is better known as an agricultural specialist than a banker, has caught international attention for the reforms he has initiated in Nigeria’s agricultural sector, including delivery of agricultural subsidies directly to farmers through mobile phones.

Whoever is picked to succeed Dr Kaberuka will initially have to confront “shoes-too-big-to-fill” naysayers but will be guided by the Bank having drawn up a strategy for the decade to 2022.

The blueprint has two prongs — inclusive and clean growth —explaining why AfDB has placed climate change and sustainable development at the core of the meeting’s agenda.

In interviews with African Banker, the candidates point to continuity with significant tweaks to accommodate their vision. These novel ideas, if taken forward by the new president, would help the Bank address pressing challenges including competition for influence in Africa from emerging players like China and Turkey.

Dr Kaberuka elevated the Bank’s role in Africa as a leading development institution. He is also credited with steering the Bank through the tumultuous 2008 financial crisis and increasing infrastructure lending.