Five years doesn’t seem much when the ADB has been going on for now 58 years. 1969 was still a different time when there was still hope that African lead pan African institutions would get beyond colonial shackles to a bright future. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from the Philatelist.
The new hope I mentioned above is all over this stamp issue from 1969. The stamp issue broke down the progress into four areas, industry, agriculture, education, and communications. I am featuring the communications stamp. Notice the radio announcer, at a station no doubt funded by the ADB, sits in a modern control booth and exabits the new pan African style pioneered by Ghanaian President Nkumo and later copied shamelessly by Barack Obama. What the African listener heard was going to be different than the BBC World Service. Progress. If you look at modern materials from the ADB, you see their high rise and claims what a safe, respected institution they are. Understandable, but less exciting and vaguely off track on a continent where there is still much to do.
Todays stamp is issue A36, a 30 Franc stamp issued by Burundi on July 29th, 1969. It was a four stamp issue plus a souvenir sheet in different denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 40 cents cancelled to order.
The African Development Bank was formed at the suggestion of the Organization of African Unity. That was a group of newly independent African leaders and those still struggling for independence. The idea was that once Africa had expunged colonialism a pan African economic and political block would take it’s rightful place as an important world power. This goal was not to be as it was let down by African leaders who became dictators for life and broke down further into colonial language and European economic theory blocs. There was no need for a dictator debating society and the Organization of African Unity closed in 2002.
The African Development Bank goes on. It is hard to point to large projects that once done, transformed the continent. On the other hand, over the years literally thousands of projects have been funded, yet the bank is still solvent which implies the projects were successful and thus were able to pay back the money fronted. Here I want to point out that the single biggest source of capital is not charity from a donor country but capital invested by Nigeria, mainly during it’s oil rich salad days in the 1970s. It is still run by Former Nigerian Minister Akinwumi Adesina. There is still a little of the pan African flair. The headquarters of the Nigerian dominated bank is in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Notice the former colony of a different country, speaking a different language, pan African ideal in action.
The realities of Africa make progress slow. or even regression. We are talking about a real Burundi stamp from 1969, There last real issue was from 9 years ago as they no longer can prove a postal system. Indeed the African Development Bank had to abandon their headquarters building and set up temporary shop in Tunis between 2003 and 2017 due to civil war in the Ivory Coast. They are back in their old building which still stood. Take progress where you can and build on what you have.
Well my drink is empty. Usually I make fun, perhaps too much, of an “institution” like ADB. Here I am kind of impressed it is still around and trying to do what it was created for. Ah bartender, another please. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.