The inaugural meeting of the Board of Governors of the Bank was held from 4 to 7 November 1964 in Lagos, Nigeria. The Bank's headquarters opened in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, in March 1965 and the Bank's operations commenced on 1 July 1966. From February 2003 onwards, the Bank operated from its Temporary Relocation Agency in Tunis, Tunisia, owing to the prevailing political conflict in Côte d’Ivoire at the time. The Bank was able to return to its original headquarters in Abidjan in late 2013 once the political crisis was over. By June 2015, over 1,500 staff had returned to the Bank's Abidjan headquarters out of the more than 1,900 total staff complement at the Bank.