Welcome to Hard Talk from the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker.

My guest today runs the African Development Bank, the multilateral financial institution,

which has one of the most important and challenging missions on earth to transform Africa

into a sustainable economic success story by way of global cooperation and support.

Akinwumi Adashina, a Nigerian economist and former agriculture minister, is in his second term at the top of the bank.

His stakeholders are the 54 countries in Africa and 27 non-regional countries, including the US, China and Japan,

all of them notionally committed to helping Africa emerge from poverty, debt and chronic underdevelopment.

Adashina is an incorrigible optimist.

He sees an Africa transformed in the 21st century,

becoming a global economic powerhouse, fueled by renewable energy, a young, rapidly growing

population and integration into international trading networks. It is an exciting vision,

but very far from current reality.

African nations are actually drowning in a mountain of debt.

There are few jobs for young people.

Climate change is already wreaking havoc,

and many countries in the rich world are preoccupied with problems much closer to home.

So is Akinwumiomi Adashina's positivity,

realistic or deluded? Well, he joins me now. Welcome to Hard Talk. It's good to see you, Stephen.

It's great to have you here. You need the world to believe in a bright African future. How's that going right now? It's going pretty well.

If you take a look at the African economic outlook we had from the African Development Bank,

the GDP growth rates of last year was 3.1%. This year, it's 3.7%. And next year it's going to be 4.3%.

Now, why that is important is that that is well above the global

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