Female Leadership: African Development Bank
Three women have been selected to fill senior-level positions at the African Development Bank, AfDB president Donald Kaberuka announced last month. Cecilia Akintomide will serve as the first-ever female Secretary-General of the bank, while Hela Cheikhrouhou will head the New Energy, Environment and Climate Change department. Gemina Archer-Davies will direct the Corporate Human Resources Management branch. “I am delighted to make these appointments to key senior positions and to increase the number of women at senior levels,” Kaberuka said. Women account for 45% of AfDB staff but are found in less than 20% of top-level positions. “All three appointments are well merited,” he added. “I very much hope that they will be role models for the many younger staff who I know have great potential.”
Moroccan MP Saloua Kerkri-Belkeziz lauded the appointments as “a major step forward for Africa”, and she hopes they will be an inspiration for Morocco to appoint more women into economics and finance management positions. Bochra Belhaj Hmida, former president of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women, had mixed feelings about the appointments. “Of course this is a positive step towards gender equality and the encouragement of women to access decision-making positions,” she said. But appointing women to high-level jobs should not be a newsworthy event, Belhaj Hmida said. “Stressing that appointments are ‘due’ is nothing but a proof that there is a continuous need to provide justification in order for women to have their rights – and that is not normal,” she added.
