This year marks the 60th Annual Meeting of the African Development Bank (AfDB), a healthy son of the global financial system, fueled by the exploitation of the peoples and resources of the African continent. A system rooted in a colonial logic that continues to regard Africa as a territory of sacrifice, debt, extraction and domination.
In the face of the bank’s auspicious 60th anniversary, delegates from communities in Côte d’Ivoire, the Republic of Guinea, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali and Ghana, feminist, environmental, rural and pan-African civil society organisations and movements, met in Abidjan from 21 to 23 May 2025 as part of a radical Counter-Space. There they built a collective critique on the AfDB and the impacts of its wide-ranging projects across the continent and also outlined their demands for Africa’s development futures in the form of a powerful declaration.
