ABUAD gets $40m AfDB loan

The African Development Bank says it has approved a loan facility of $40m for the Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti to finance its expansion plan.
The bank said in a statement on its website that its board of directors approved the loan for ABUAD on October 19, 2016, adding that it was its first private-sector transaction in the education sector.
Explaining the reason for its intervention, the AfDB noted that with only 130 universities in Nigeria, more than a million young people in the country were unable to secure admission into universities due to capacity constraint.
This, it said, was apart from poor quality of the curriculum offered by most of the universities in Nigeria, which had not helped in producing market-ready graduates.
The AfDB said with the gesture it extended to ABUAD, it expected the university to turn out over 12,000 high quality and employable graduates at end of the loan’s life.
The university was also expected to produce not less than 2,400 trained farmers who would benefit from the university’s farmers training programs.
The AfDB loan, targeted at raising entrepreneurs, would assist ABUAD to actualise its expansion plan which involves construction of new facilities.
The proposed facilities include a 400-bed teaching hospital, an industrial research park and a 1.1megawatts small hydro power installation.
The university is also expected to use the loan to strengthen its administrative and governance structures.
The AfDB statement quoted the Senior Vice-President of the bank, Frannie Léautier, to have said, “Education is one of the booming private sector engagements in Africa at this time. The bank’s support to the sector will help to leverage quality education, especially in science and technology.”
Léautier promised that the AfDB would be exploring other avenues and scholarships to support of education in disciplines that are critical to Africa’s development.

SOURCE.. PUNCH