The only multilateral development institution specifically devoted to Africa, the AfDB is only the seventh largest provider of development finance to the continent behind the World Bank, European Union and big bilateral lenders like France.

But a panel of experts co-chaired by former Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano and former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, and including Nobel economics laureate Joseph Stiglitz, recommends a sharp expansion of the bank's mission.

The report's vision reflects the deepening confidence of many of the bank's African members, who want the 43-year-old institution to give Africa a louder voice in lending decisions as their economies enjoy their best growth rates in decades.

A summary of the report, to be launched officially on Tuesday, says the bank should be "the channel of choice for development finance" to boost growth in Africa, where it says 300 million people still live on less than $1 a day.

"The ADB can and must become the premier development institution in Africa, providing a strong voice for, and within, Africa so that Africans can take their rightful place at the forefront of continental economic stewardship," it says.

"With an elected African president, a strong balance sheet, and representation in all African countries the ADB is well positioned to do this," the summary says.

The AfDB - whose shareholders include Africa's 53 nations and 24 non-African donor countries - lends commercially to Africa's richest nations and lends at concessionary rates to poor ones from its African Development Fund, financed largely by Western donors. It focuses on infrastructure projects.

The panel was established by its current president, the Rwandan Donald Kaberuka, who gained a reputation as a consensus builder after helping to rebuild his country's devastated economy as finance minister following the genocide of 1994.

The bank often works closely with the IMF and World Bank in lending to the continent, but under Kaberuka it has sought to strengthen its own in-house capacity to analyse economies, assess risk and sharpened its focus on infrastructure and water.

Written after consultations with African governments, the report proposes the bank should have four main tasks -- investing in infrastructure, building effective states, promoting the private sector and developing skills.

The panel notes the institution's voice has in the past been muted and its agenda "lacked focus", an apparent reference to a series of rows over financing and loan policy in the 1990s.

This was now changing, the report says, but more should be done to amplify Africa's voice in discussions over development.

"Too often, the African perspective is absent or neglected," it said. The report says the bank should be more than a conduit for aid, becoming the top authority on African development.

In Tunis on Tuesday the panel will present the report to Kaberuka, who will discuss its proposals with colleagues in coming months. Based since its creation in Ivory Coast, the AfDB relocated temporarily to Tunis in 2003 because of war there.