Date Published: May 21, 2025.
The 17th replenishment of the African Development Fund (ADF), set to take place in November 2025, comes at a critical juncture marked by increasing development needs and a rapidly changing geopolitical environment.
Although the Fund has disbursed nearly USD 60 billion to aid African economies, dwindling donor contributions and a fast-changing global aid environment are putting its future capacity under increasing strain.
This new policy brief, intended to support planning and negotiations leading up to ADF-17, puts some of these challenges into context and highlights some key action points.
Key recommendations include:
- Diversify ADF’s sources of funding:
- Attract more non-traditional donors to diversify the resource pool.
- Incentivize African Regional Member Countries to increase contributions.
- Encourage traditional donors to lock-in long term commitments.
- Develop an in-house Debt Sustainability Framework (DSF) that is relevant to African countries:
- Recognizing asset-creating debt as distinct in sustainability assessments.
- Avoid arbitrary debt limits to reflect Africa’s investment needs.
- Integrate natural capital into Debt Sustainability Analysis (DSA).
- Increase ADF’s scale of operation:
- Leverage capital markets by implementing a market borrowing option.
- Incentivize African Regional Member Countries to step up contributions.
- Attract more non-traditional donors.
- Open Resource Access to AfDB resources to ADF-only countries and vice versa:
- Enable selective AfDB access for ADF-only countries beyond “Gap Status”.
- Increase access to concessional loans to all RMCs and not just ADF-only countries on a selective basis.
- Review the relevance of eligibility categories versus project-based access.
At Development Reimagined, we believe the reform momentum surrounding the 17th replenishment presents a unique opportunity to put these recommendations into practice, fortifying the ADF’s capacity and solidifying its pivotal role in shaping Africa’s long term development trajectory.
Read the full policy brief
