The African Development Bank (AfDB) should do more to tap finance from oil-rich Middle Eastern nations and access the money held by pension funds on the continent as development needs grow, a contender for the institution’s presidency said.

Africa’s biggest multilateral development bank currently lends out about $10-billion a year when the continent’s needs exceed $100-billion, said Mauritania’s Sidi Ould Tah, who recently stepped down as the president of the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa.

“We are not really tapping all the potential of this region which has excess of liquidity and also has many development finance institution which are providing very low cost financing,” Tah said of the Middle East’s richest nations, which together form the Gulf Cooperation Council, in an interview this week. “There is big interest from the GCC countries to invest in Africa.”

Tah, who has served as finance minister of his country, is one of five candidates running to lead the AfDB as Nigeria’s Akinwumi Adesina prepares to step down. If successful he would take over at a time when Africa’s infrastructure, health and related climate adaptation needs are surging even as the US cancels almost all of its aid and withdraws from financing climate-related projects.

The front-runners are seen as Swazi Tshabalala, South Africa’s candidate, and Amadou Hott, a minister of economy and planning in Senegal. Zambia and Chad have also fielded candidates.

“Given my experience and my network I can add to the development of the continent,” he said, referencing his connections to the Arab world.

The AfDB could invest alongside sovereign wealth funds from the gulf countries to lower risk and could do the same for African pension funds, which he said collectively hold more than $2-trillion but invest much of their money abroad.

While the AfDB has a capital base of about $400-billion the sovereign wealth funds of Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia collectively have assets of about $4-trillion, according to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute.

That doesn’t mean the bank should turn its back on western development finance institutions such as France’s Agence Francaise de Developpement given the scale of the continent’s needs, he added.

In addition, Tah said he would seek a closer working relationship between the continent’s various development finance institutions to reduce competition. He also urged the consolidation of credit guarantee agencies across the region as they are individually too small.

“Most of them are have very low capitalisation and some of them are overlapping and most of the African countries are not covered,” he said. “We need to consolidate and we need to have a bold vision for African guarantee” funds.

That could involve the formation of an African guarantee agency, he said.

The election of the next AfDB president takes place on May 29. The president of the bank, which was founded in 1964 to promote development in Africa, is elected by its board of governors to a five-year term, which can be renewed once.