World Bank outdoors new Strategy to support Africa

March 03, 2011 Accra, March 3, GNA - The World Bank has outdoored "Africa's Future And The World Bank's Support To It, February 2011, Africa Regional Strategy" that aims at facilitating the transformation of African economies to improve the lives of the people.

The new approach, endorsed by the Bank's Board of Executive Directors, marks a significant shift in the way the organisation views Africa and its own role as a supporter of the Continent's progress.

The World Bank's Vice President for Africa Region, Ms Obiageli Ezekwesili, who announced this via video conference on Thursday, said the new development blueprint for Africa aimed at pushing the Continent to middle level income status in 10 years' time.

The Strategy focuses on fighting corruption and boosting democracy to attract new investments. She described it as a bold move to rid Africa of poverty and improve upon governance.

Ms Ezekwesili said the Bank would be reviewing the progress of each country after every five years to check progress, adding that it would give citizens more information about government spending to increase social accountability. The Bank would also create a civil society fund to finance organizations that scrutinize government spending.

She said: "We are excited about Africa's future. Today's Africa is exemplified by the many success stories and stronger economic growth being driven by the dynamism of its people and economies.

"We, therefore, use the opportunity of our new Africa Strategy to listen, learn and define how we could better support the Continent's aspiration as it maintains the momentum of economic reforms over the next decade," she said.

The Strategy shifts from a more general focus on seeking economic stability and sound fundamentals to emphasise the need for attention in three key areas.

The areas include competitiveness and employment under, which countries would be assisted to diversify their economies and generate jobs, especially for the 7-10 million young people entering the labour market each year.

It would also help to close the gap between infrastructure needs and investments, which currently stands about $48 billion annually, and support efforts to make it easier for businesses to operate. In addition, the plan would focus on building the skills of workers.

Another area of focus is to deal with vulnerability and resilience of the Continent's poor, who are directly affected by shocks such as economics, health-related, natural disasters and conflict, which keep them in poverty.

It would focus on better health care, deal pre-emptively with the effects of climate change through improved irrigation and water management and strengthen public agencies to share resources more fairly and to build consensus. The Strategy seeks to reduce the number of shocks and limit the damage from those that do occur.

A third area is to improve upon governance and public sector capacity in education, health and basic infrastructure, which often are either not delivered or delivered badly because of weak management of public funds.

The Bank's programme of support aims to give citizens better information on what they should expect from their governments, as well as the capacity to report on instances when services are not delivered properly.

It would also work directly with governments to help them to improve their systems and capacity to deliver basic services and manage accounts.

"In implementing the strategy, the World Bank Group shall remain fruitfully engaged with citizens as they demand greater participation in the benefits of improved economic performance, deploy our partnerships, knowledge and finance to work with governments; private sector; civil society and other partners and help countries to speed up the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); expand economic prosperity and reduce poverty," Ms Ezekwesili said.

Significantly, the Strategy reverses the order of importance of the Bank's instruments to support Africa. The most important ingredient would be partnerships; then knowledge and finally finance. The goal is to make sure that the Bank's interventions complement what others, including the African Governments, the private sector and other agencies, are doing.

In answer to a question filed by the Ghana News Agency as to what the Bank was going to do to assist the Media as they partnered it to fight corruption to ensure value for money disbursed by the Bank for various projects, Ms Ezekwesili said the Bank was facilitating the passage of the Right to Information Bill.

Ghana, Nigeria; South Africa, Zambia; Rwanda; Kenya and Tanzania, were among the countries that participated in the video-conference.

GNA