Macky Sall asks AfDB to create investment bank for youth employment, lauds Desert to Power

The President of Senegal, Macky Sall has recently received the administrators of the African Development Bank. This took place on February in Dakar, on the last day of their consultation mission in the country.

The Head of State of Senegal, Macky Sall extolled the beautiful relations between the government of Senegal and the African Development Bank (AfDB) that commenced in 1972. He lauded AfDB’s support to Senegal in the presence of Minister of Economy, Planning and Cooperation, Amadou Hott, who is also the Government of AfDB for Senegal.

“The support of the African Development Bank, our Bank, was decisive in phase 1 of the emerging Senegal Plan. The most emblematic are the AIBD international airport, the regional express train, the city modernization program and the toll highway,” Macky Sall said.

The President of Senegal asked assistance from AfDB for establishing an investment bank for youth employment across Africa. He revealed that his government is pumping out around USD 50 million every year on youth entrepreneurship with an objective to tackle unemployment that affects the age group. According to the 58-year-old Senegalese politician, who has been President of Senegal since April 2012, job creation will lessen post-harvest losses and losses of fruit production through storage and processing.

He discussed the challenges of energy, mainly in terms of the energy transition, and said that the objective is to reach 30 percent of clean energy by 2021. In this regard, he emphasized and lauded AfDB’s initiative titled ‘Desert to Power’, which intends to speed up the economic development by adding solar energy generation capacity of up to 10 GW and bring power to 250 million people across the Sahel region via a network of solar power generation by 2025 through a combination of public and private interventions.

“The connectivity infrastructure, especially the railways, will make sense of the continental free trade area (Zleca). The African Development Bank is the bank of Africa. It is not just any bank: it is our bank! It must support the continent in its real problems and its real challenges,” Macky Sall further added.

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