KemetLeadsBabacar Ndiaye
He decided Africa needed its own trade-finance bank and pushed Afreximbank through against the donors.
The rise
Born in Conakry to a Senegalese father and a Guinean mother, he trained at the business school of Toulouse, at Sciences Po in Paris and as a chartered accountant. In 1965 he joined the African Development Bank, a year old at the time, in its first cohort of young professionals, and rose to vice-president for finance.
What they did
Elected president in 1985 and re-elected in 1990, he opened the Bank's capital to non-African members in 1987 and carried through a capital increase to some $23bn. The Bank won its first AAA rating in those years, and he used the standing to create institutions it could not itself be: Shelter Afrique for housing, the African Business Roundtable in 1990, and Afreximbank, agreed in 1993.
The full picture
His decade ended with the loan book in trouble: his successor Omar Kabbaj inherited non-performing sovereign loans, froze lending to several members and imposed a restructuring. Expansion had outrun credit discipline. Even his birth year is unsettled — the AfDB dates it to 1936, while 2017 obituaries gave his age as 82 and 85.
Why it matters
Afreximbank stands behind much of the continent's trade, and behind its vaccine and fuel purchases in recent crises. One banker decided Africa needed it and pushed it through. Institution-building rarely gets a face.
“My village is Senegal and Africa is my country.”