Welcome to our second edition of the Regional Integration Brief. In May this year, the Bank welcomed Dr. Sidi Ould Tah as its President, following his election at the AfDB 2025 Annual Meetings.

The President has since unveiled his new Four Cardinal Points strategic agenda for the Bank. They provide a comprehensive development framework centered on four interconnected pillars: Enhanced Access to Capital: Mobilizing Africa's Financial Resources; Reforming and Consolidating Financial Systems and Institutions; Harnessing Demographic Transformation for Economic Development; and Building Climate-Resilient Infrastructure and Robust Value Addition.

2025 was also the first full year of implementing the Bank's new Ten-Year Strategy (2024–2033), a core part of which is its Integrate Africa pillar. At RDRI, we consolidated gains from momentum in 2024, drove regional strategy design, assessment and policy dialogue, financed transformative regional operations and took decisions that clarify what selectivity means in transformative operations like the Lobito Rail Corridor.

We expanded our partnership base to the private sector and also produced cutting-edge knowledge products charting the course for integration - hereby transforming how we communicate on regional integration.

Report by the African Development Bank