NEPAD - New Partnership for Africa's Development

1. World Bank support for Africa's development covers a wide range of activities in almost all the countries of the region. African countries receive financial and technical support from the World Bank in human development, (education, health and social protection, poverty analysis); environmental sustainability, infrastructure development; structural reform (private sector development, small and medium enterprises, financial sector, public sector reform), trade, HIV/AIDS; rural development; and capacity building, including in the area of public budget and financial management. In addition to this support at the country level, the Bank also works with and through the regional economic communities, such as ECOWAS, SADC and COMESA.

Scope of World Bank Support for NEPAD

2. Most of these areas are closely related to NEPAD and to the thematic clusters The clusters are: Labor and Employment; Macroeconomic Policies, Trade and Diversification; Agriculture and Environment; Population and Reproductive Health; Human Resource Development; Infrastructure Development: Water and Sanitation, Energy and Transport; and Humanitarian and Human Rights Issues: Peace, security and Development. that the UN agencies working in Africa have identified. In fact, the World Bank Group is active in all the areas covered by the clusters.

3. This note, however, focuses on the support the World Bank has provided in response to NEPAD and the lead organizations identified by NEPAD for specific programs. The Bank's policy on NEPAD is to avoid compromising African ownership of NEPAD and to work entirely according to its requests and with the institutions it designates. In this sense, the scale of Bank support to NEPAD has been substantial: some forty Bank staff, including several senior staff, have been involved in the preparation of background materials for NEPAD and designated lead agencies; and a special activity has been established to facilitate the charging of time and travel for NEPAD.

Areas of Specific Support to NEPAD

4. At the request of NEPAD, the World Bank presented proposals at a workshop in Benoni in January 24-27 2002, for NEPAD programs in a number of specific areas: infrastructure, agriculture, regional trade facilitation, health, nutrition, population, education, community driven development and capital flows.

5. Since the Benoni workshop, the World Bank has followed up with the NEPAD secretariat and with designated NEPAD-led institutions and programs, while continuing with our overall program of support to Africa.

6. Specific follow-up by the World Bank has occurred in those cases where NEPAD has designated a lead African agency which has in turn requested Bank support. These requests have focused on the preparation of the NEPAD Action Plans in various sectors:

· Led by the African Development Bank, and in association with the European Union, work has focused on supporting the implementation of a range of regional infrastructure projects. These include projects in areas such as power generation, pooling and transmission, gas flaring, air and road transport, and the management of shared water resources. A list of projects has been designated as priority by NEPAD in its recent Action Plan A Summary of NEPAD Action Plans, July 2002

· Guided by the NEPAD Secretariat in partnership with FAO as the lead agency to elaborate the program for agriculture, the work has emphasized accelerated growth in productivity, improved food security, better management of natural resources, and heightened access to markets. The Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) has provided leadership on work to restructure agricultural research and development in support of improved productivity, and the World Bank works closely with FARA. African countries are already moving to implement many of the priorities articulated under the NEPAD framework in the context of their poverty reduction strategies. The World Bank supports implementation to enhance agricultural performance at the country level through the full range of its instruments

· Work with Africa's regional economic communities, to ensure that their programs dovetail with NEPAD's priorities. The regional economic strategy for West Africa was discussed at a summit on regional integration in May 2002 with the participation of NEPAD; that for Central Africa is to be discussed at a summit in October. The Bank has been asked to help strengthen the capacity of the ECOWAS secretariat to perform as a NEPAD focal point. It has also supported analytic work on a regional basis, and has financed a number of regional or multi-country projects, such as that to expand trade in East Africa.

· Work with the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) on the development of appropriate codes and standards for the management of public resources. Here, the Bank's analytic work on public budget management, expenditure tracking and procurement, offers NEPAD the possibility of a technical baseline in considering these standards. Work on the FSAP program (jointly with the IMF) offers a similar baseline for any assessment of financial sector governance.

· Provided advice and offered technical resources to NEPAD's strategy for public dissemination and discussion within Africa.

Other relevant support

7. In addition to these specific areas, the World Bank has developed proposals for, or has moved ahead with, regional and thematic programs in a number of areas which are high on NEPAD's priorities but where we have not yet been asked to work with a designated lead agency. These include:

· HIV/AIDS. The World Bank has committed $1 billion for a Multi-Country HIV/AIDS Program (MAP), under which projects for 16 countries, totaling $552.5 million have been approved, with 13 more countries in preparation, and with sub-regional projects about to begin. The Bank has also worked with other development partner on the problems of other infectious diseases.

· Education. The World Bank has launched a four-pronged regional action plan to help African countries accelerate education development by (i) promoting attainment of good-quality basic education for all by 2015; (ii) improving access to secondary education and enhancing the quality of science teaching; (iii) revitalizing tertiary education; and (iv) helping build capacity to address the impact of HIV/AIDS on the education sector, and ensure that education programs play an effective role in HIV/AIDS prevention.

· Health. Consistent with NEPAD's action plan for health, the World Bank is focusing on the control of communicable diseases, the integrated management of infant and child illnesses and the strengthening of health delivery systems.

· Capital Flows. The World Bank has proposed joint work with NEPAD on risk mitigation. This will be discussed further shortly.

· The Bank has given special attention to facilitating NEPAD's dialogue with development partners. In particular, the Strategic Partnership with Africa (SPA), which is chaired by the World Bank, is developing an action agenda aimed at supporting the new partnership framework emerging from the NEPAD and PRSP processes. The World Bank also prepared background for the G8 Africa Action Plan

8. In summary, the World Bank has:

· Sought to provide the maximum support possible to NEPAD in its technical planning and programming
· Specifically sought to foster the African-led principles of NEPAD by responding to requests from NEPAD and the institutions it designates
· Continued its wide-ranging support to the broad aims of NEPAD and its specific sector strategies through its ongoing country and regional programs.