“The African Development Bank is firmly convinced that collaborating with civil society is essential for the inclusive and sustainable development that will genuinely improve the lives of our people.” When the President of the Bank Group, Akinwumi Adesina, made this statement at the Civil Society Forum in Abidjan in 2022, he was confirming the institution’s commitment to putting African civil society organizations at the heart of its development policies.

Such views began to be heard in the Bank’s corridors in the 1990s. In fact, the voice of the main development organization on the continent was starting to mature as single-party regimes in Africa were beginning to collapse. The institution started taking civil society organizations into account in its policies.

Initially timid, this voice has only become genuinely audible during the last decade, as part of the institutional reforms instigated by the former Minister of Agriculture of Nigeria, Akinwumi Adesina, who was elected as the Bank’s new President in May 2015. The unit that dealt with civil society at the Bank became a fully autonomous division called “Civil Society and Community Engagement”, which was combined with the Gender and Women’s Empowerment division to become the department of Gender, Women and Civil Society. This development would mark the start of an era in which the institution would consistently give a “voice to the voiceless” in order to “make Africa’s capital work better for Africa’s development”, the theme of the forthcoming Annual Meetings 2025 scheduled to take place in Abidjan, the economic capital of Côte d’Ivoire, from 26 to 30 May.

Over the last decade, civil society has become a central pillar of inclusive development in Africa. In fact, President Adesina has drawn on his experience as a former Minister of Agriculture, giving Nigerian civil society a central role in his flagship transparency initiative on the distribution of agricultural supplies (particularly fertilizers) to turn around a sector characterized by serious malfunctions.

An action plan for engaging with civil society

In October 2024, the Bank developed an Action Plan for Civil Society Engagement 2024-2028, reaffirming its desire to promote an inclusive Africa with civil society organizations (CSOs) acting as monitors but also partners for its actions in the field. Developed as part of a highly participatory, multi-party, inclusive process, the action plan aims, among other things, to create an environment conducive to CSOs to promote growth and development in Africa. It recommends that CSOs are included in all the Bank Group’s policy development and operational implementation processes in all countries on the continent. The plan also takes account of knowledge production and strengthening policy dialogue to encourage the development of policies and advocacy based on conclusive data. Augustine Njamnshi, an eminent voice in the civil society movement for climate and energy, praised the adoption of the plan by declaring: “The approval of this Action Plan marks a historic turning point in our collaboration with the African Development Bank Group. It has come out of a shared vision to become our collective legacy. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the Bank for this fundamental act of trust”.

In its Capacity Development Strategy 2021-2025, the Bank also approved the establishment of a community of practice on civil society engagement, aimed at encouraging knowledge sharing, capacity building and collaborative innovation. The open day events for civil society, organized annually by the Bank’s country offices, give the institution an opportunity to engage directly in dialogue with members of CSOs on the performance of its projects and programs in various African countries. Over 15 national events have been organized in Africa by the dedicated division since 2015.

The voice of civil society in project development, performance and evaluation

“The African Development Bank aims to respond to the needs of vulnerable communities, promote social justice and contribute to sustainable development throughout the continent,” explains Zeneb Touré, head of the Civil Society and Community Engagement division for the Bank Group. Since 2017, civil society has contributed to the development of over 40 country strategy papers (CSP) and the implementation of around 50 projects funded by the Bank Group and its partners.

In Zimbabwe, where the African Development Fund, the Bank Group’s concessional financing window, agreed a grant of over $3.5 million to implement the Skills for Youth and Women Employability and Productivity Project, the participation of civil society organizations in developing the project helped to identify the young people and women who were in need but marginalized within the project’s beneficiary communities. Civil society was able to identify training initiatives in entrepreneurial skills to support the capacity of young people in the locations covered by the project.

In Tanzania, the Skills Development for Youth Employability in the Blue Economy Project, which received Bank Group funding of $54.09 million, benefited from civil society involvement. A representative from civil society organizations in Tanzania sits on the project’s management committee and other civil society actors are involved in raising awareness to encourage girls’ participation in technical and vocational teaching and training. In collaboration with the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Multinational Project for the Economic Empowerment of Women in the Sahel region benefited from the local expertise of civil society organizations on participatory inclusion efforts, community trust and contributing to resource allocations in Mali, Niger and Chad. The project, which received $1.38 million in funding from the Bank’s Transition Support Facility, aims to strengthen women’s empowerment in the three countries in the Sahel.

“Civil society is not on the margins of development dynamics; it is their very essence, their living memory and their engine for change. We pay tribute to the Bank's unique power to unite the continent's driving forces around a common vision of improving the lives of African people,” commented Kolyang Palebele, a representative from the Platform of Farmers' Organizations of Africa at the Civil Society Forum in May 2025.

Civil society, a major ally for combating climate change

As the producer of less than 4% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, Africa is the least polluting continent but it is by far the one the suffers the most from the effects of climate change. Worse, climate finance windows are almost inaccessible to African countries. Moreover, the Bank has forged strong alliances with African civil society to ensure that the voice of the continent is heard on international bodies. From African climate conferences to COPs, the institution maintains regular dialogue with the representatives of African CSOs to gather their points of view and support their participation in various forums to convey the voice of Africa together and consistently.

At COP 28, which was held in Dubai in late 2023, the Bank Group and CSOs formed the “African Development Bank Group-Civil Society Coalition on Climate and Energy”, jointly setting out “five absolute priorities” to combat the effects of climate change in Africa. The priorities adopted are adaptation, loss and damage, food systems, land use, and the protection and restoration of forests.

Following the economic crisis associated with the Covid-19 pandemic, African CSOs rallied around the initiative supported first by President Adesina, and then by other leaders on the continent, which aims to channel the IMF’s special drawing rights (SDRs) towards multilateral development banks to strengthen climate finance and address countries’ development needs. The Coalition founded for this purpose by African civil society organizations invited the global community, the governments of industrialized countries and development partners to implement best practices, innovations and technologies on an inclusive basis, involving farmers, local communities and in particular, women and young people. According to the CSOs, it has become necessary to establish an approach that combines scientific and traditional knowledge without harming biodiversity or compromising the resilience of society.

“The Bank has made the contributions of civil society organizations one of the key priorities of its work (...). They are essential partners in the Bank’s efforts to strengthen the continent’s resilience to climate change,” said Akinwumi Adesina at the Civil Society Forum 2022, held in Abidjan. “Their work will continue to be supported and promoted by the African Development Bank,” he assured those present.

The Bank has kept its promise ever since, as “over the years, engaging with civil society has become a pillar of the African Development Bank’s actions. What was once a mere aspiration has become a structured, institutionalized, results-focused partnership,” acknowledged Beth Dunford, the Bank Group’s Vice-President for Agriculture, Human and Social Development at the most recent Civil Society Organizations Forum in Abidjan on 8 May 2025.

In fact, the Bank organizes a Civil Society Forum every year, the culmination of its regional forums. This platform for knowledge sharing and joint production between the Bank Group’s most senior leaders and the main representatives of African civil society has always provided an unparalleled opportunity to question the Bank’s actions and above all, take into account the “voice of the voiceless” in Africa, which is the undeniable driver of the African civil society dynamic.