On the first day of an historic joint United Nations/World Bank Group mission to the Great Lakes region, the World Bank Group announced $1 billion in proposed new funding to help countries in the region provide better health and education services, generate more cross-border trade, and fund hydroelectricity projects in support of the Great Lakes peace agreement that was signed by 11 countries in February.

World Bank Group President Dr. Jim Yong Kim, who is traveling with the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, on a three-day trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda, and Uganda, said that a secure and developed Great Lakes region was vital to Africa’s efforts to dramatically reduce extreme poverty and create prosperity for millions who have had little economic opportunity.

“We made extraordinary efforts to secure an additional $1 billion in funding because we believe this can be a major contributor to a lasting peace in the Great Lakes region,” Kim said. “This funding will help revitalize economic development, create jobs, and improve the lives of people who have suffered for far too long. Now the leaders of the Great Lakes region, by  restarting economic activity and improving livelihoods in border areas, can boost confidence, build economies, and give new opportunities for millions of people.”

Kim said the new regional pledge, in zero-interest financing from the International Development Association* or IDA, will support two major regional development priorities: recovery of livelihoods to  reduce the vulnerability of people living in the Great Lakes whose communities have suffered greatly during conflict in the region; and revitalizing  and expanding cross-border economic activity to spur greater opportunity and integration in the areas of agriculture, energy, transport  and regional trade.

The World Bank’s proposed additional funding includes roughly $100 million for supporting agriculture and rural livelihoods for internally displaced people and refugees in the region; $340 million  to support the 80 megawatt Rusumo Falls hydroelectric project for Burundi, Rwanda, and Tanzania; $150 million for the rehabilitation of the Ruzizi I and II hydroelectric projects and financing for Ruzizi III, supplying electricity for Rwanda, Burundi, and DRC; $165 million toward building roads in DRC’s North and South Kivu and Province Orientale; $180 million for improving infrastructure and border management along the Rwanda-DRC border; and additional millions of dollars for public health laboratories,  fisheries, and trade facilitation programs among others.

While other parts of sub-Saharan Africa are experiencing high growth rates, countries of the Great Lakes region have had extremely high levels of poverty and very low levels of key services such as access to electricity. Yields from agriculture also are typically quite low.  A key part of the World Bank Group’s development approach to the region is to increase power generation and interconnectivity to take advantage of low-cost and renewable sources of hydropower and geothermal energy. Developing the hydropower potential in DRC, in particular, will provide Burundi and Rwanda access to low-cost power and a stake in regional stability. Currently, there is no regional grid and very limited interconnectivity between countries in the region.

In Kinshasa, UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, warmly welcomed the World Bank Group pledge.

“Many countries in Africa are taking dynamic forward strides, and now the people of the Great Lakes region, especially the DRC, deserve their full chance for progress. A peace agreement must deliver a peace dividend.  That is why Dr. Jim Kim and I are making this visit. We see a horizon of hope for the people of the Great Lakes, and we are determined to help them every step of the way,” said the UN Secretary-General.

Cross-border trade key to peace

In announcing its new funding pledge, the World Bank Group said that promoting significantly more trade is in the common interest of all countries in the region and will greatly improve the effectiveness of national development policies.

“Together with much more electricity for the Great Lakes, there will be very large economic pay-offs if we can all help to make border crossings easier and faster for people and their goods to move from one country into another,” said Makhtar Diop, the World Bank’s Vice President for Africa, who is accompanying President Kim and the UN Secretary General on their fact-finding mission.

“Africa’s potential to provide food for its citizens, however, is not yet being realized because farmers in areas like the Great Lakes face more trade barriers in getting their food to markets across the region than farmers anywhere else in the world,” Diop said. “Too often borders get in the way of getting plentiful food supplies to homes and communities that are struggling with too little to eat.”

Improving roads will also help trade and people’s livelihoods

In calling for a regional peace and development solution for the Great Lakes, the World Bank officials said the new financing pledge will help to rehabilitate roads to connect remote trading communities with regional markets.

Bank support will focus on rehabilitation of primary cross-border trunk roads, to be complemented through the rehabilitation and opening of secondary roads required to bring goods to markets. The benefits of this approach are two-fold: first, increased trade will significantly increase economic activities, livelihoods and jobs; second, connectivity will allow free movement of people and goods, and enable restoration of the state’s regulatory functions.

Within the DRC, the Bank Group’s current roads project (Pro-Routes -US$248 million) is having an important impact by contributing to the reopening of 2,176 km of roads in Province Orientale, South Kivu and Katanga. The economic impact of the rehabilitated sections has been significant, reducing transportation costs by as much as 80 percent in some cases and cutting travel time by more than half. Empirical evidence suggests that insecurity is decreasing in areas where roads have been rehabilitated.

Renewed opportunity for peace in the Great Lakes

Mary Robinson, the Special Envoy of the Great Lakes Region of Africa, who is also part of the fact-finding trip with Ban Ki-moon and Jim Yong Kim, endorsed the World Bank Group’s new development commitment to the Great Lakes and its people.

“There is a fresh chance to do more than just attend to the consequences of conflict,” Robinson said. “There is a chance to resolve its underlying causes and to stop it for good. If this new attempt is to succeed where others have fallen short, there must be optimism and courage in place of cynicism. The governments and the people of this region, and the international community, must believe once again that peace can be achieved, and be determined to take the necessary and well-coordinated actions to obtain it."

*The World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA), established in 1960, helps the world’s poorest countries by providing zero-interest development financing for projects and programs that boost economic growth, reduce poverty, and improve poor people’s lives. IDA is one of the largest sources of assistance for the world’s 82 poorest countries, 40 of which are in Africa. Resources from IDA bring positive change for 2.5 billion people living on less than $2 a day. Since its inception, IDA has supported activities in 108 countries. Annual commitments have increased steadily and averaged about $15 billion over the last three years, with about 50 percent of commitments going to Africa.

The twenty-fourth biennial meeting of governments in the Governing Council of UN-Habitat came to a close in Nairobi on Friday with a broad consensus on the relevance of sustainable urban development and the important role the agency is playing in the United Nations system.

Several resolutions were adopted after five days of intense discussions and negotiations impacting positively on the work of UN-Habitat and the lives of millions of urban dwellers.

A total of 1144 delegates from 107 countries attended the meeting representing national governments, local authorities, private sector, civil society as well as media.

The work programme and budget of the agency for the next two years was approved. There was also a resolution to give full support for the preparations of the Habitat III conference to be held in 2016 where a new global urban agenda will be formulated.

The Governing Council whose theme was ‘Sustainable Development: The role of cities in creating improved economic opportunities for all, with special reference to youth and gender’ recorded several firsts.

It was the first major gathering Kenya’s newly elected President Uhuru Kenyatta was presiding over and it was also the first Governing Council in the history of the United Nations Office at Nairobi (UNON) whose opening was broadcast live on national television. The meeting also saw two live broadcasts of the exciting Urban Talk series.

The two live TV shows were relayed by Nation TV and attracted good viewership as urbanisation experts, including UN-Habitat Executive Director Dr. Joan Clos discussed the matter.

The conference also implemented the paper smart initiative, a United Nations system initiative where it discourages use of papers and prefers going online. It saw major savings on money that could have been used on papers. This also translates into a reduced impact on the environment.

Economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa is likely to reach more than 5 percent on average in 2013-2015 as a result of high commodity prices worldwide and strong consumer spending on the continent, ensuring that the region remains amongst the fastest growing in the world -- according to the World Bank’s latest Africa’s Pulse, a twice-yearly analysis of the issues shaping Africa’s economic prospects.

In 2012, about a quarter of African countries grew at 7 percent or higher and a number of African countries, notably Sierra Leone, Niger, Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso and Rwanda, are among the fastest growing in the world.

The new World Bank report forecasts that medium-term growth prospects remain strong and will be supported by a gradually improving world economy, consistently high commodity prices, and more investment in regional infrastructure, trade, and business growth.

Welcoming the new assessment that Africa continues to grow faster than the global average, the World Bank’s Vice President called on the need for faster progress in areas such as electricity and food in the vulnerable areas of The Sahel and the Horn of Africa, and that significantly more energy and agricultural productivity were needed to raise the quality of life for Africans throughout the continent and reduce poverty significantly.

“African countries will need to bring more electricity, nutritious food, jobs and opportunity to families and communities across the continent in order to better their lives, end extreme poverty, and promote shared prosperity,” said the World Bank’s Africa Vice President Makhtar Diop. “Without more electricity and higher agricultural productivity, Africa’s development future cannot prosper. The good news is that governments in Africa are intent on changing this.”

Diop also urged African governments and their development partners to upgrade the continent’s statistical capacity so that citizens could better measure and monitor their development progress and analyze the reasons for its success and failure, especially in resource-rich countries and fragile states, where data gathering and analysis remained weak.

New mineral discoveries drive growth

Africa’s Pulse says that recent discoveries of oil, natural gas, copper, and other strategic minerals, and the expansion of several mines or the building of new ones in Mozambique, Niger, Sierra Leone, and Zambia, together with better political and economic governance, were sustaining solid economic growth across the continent.

Looking forward, it is expected that by 2020, only four or five countries in the region will not be involved in mineral exploitation of some kind, such is Africa’s abundance of natural resources.

The World Bank says that given the considerable amounts of new mineral revenues coming on stream across the region, resource-rich African countries will consciously need to invest these new earnings in better health, education, and jobs, and less poverty for their people in order to maximize their national development prospects.

Consumer spending and private investment up

Consumer spending, which accounts for more than 60 percent of Africa’s GDP, remained strong in 2012.

This trend was driven by declining inflation, which fell from 9.5 percent in January 2012 to 7.6 percent in December 2012; improved access to credit, for example in Angola, Ghana, Mozambique, South Africa, and Zambia; lower interest rates--for every interest rate hike there were three cuts; and a rebound in agricultural incomes, thanks to more favorable weather conditions in countries such as Guinea, Mauritania and Niger, which all experienced better rains compared with the 2010/2011 crop year; and the steady remittance inflows, which are estimated at $31 billion in 2012 and 2011.

Increased investment flows are supporting the region’s growth performance. In 2012, for example, net private capital flows to the region increased by 3.3 percent to a record $54.5 billion; and foreign direct investment inflows to the region increased by 5.5 percent in 2012 to $37.7 billion.

Africa’s Pulse notes that exports are also driving the continent’s growth and that the traditional destination of these goods over the last decade is changing as well. Since 2000, the overall growth of Sub-Saharan exports to emerging markets, including those of China, Brazil and India, and to countries in the region has surpassed that to developed markets. Total exports to Brazil, India and China were larger than to the EU market in 2011.

Africa’s impressive growth has not reduced poverty enough

After more than a decade of strong economic growth, the World Bank says that Africa has been able to cut poverty on the continent, but not by enough.

“While the broad picture emerging from the data is that Africa’s economies have been expanding robustly and that poverty is coming down, the aggregate hides a great deal of diversity in performance, even among Africa’s faster growers,” says Shanta Devarajan, the World Bank’s Chief Economist for Africa, and lead author of the new report.

Devarajan adds that during the second half of the 2000s, Ethiopia and Rwanda saw their economies expand at 8-10 percent (or between 5 and 8 percent per capita), which resulted in a 1.3 to 1.7 percentage point yearly fall in their national poverty rates. In contrast, poverty reduction in some other countries has lagged far behind growth.

Future offers prospects of more growth, much less poverty, and shared prosperity

Africa’s Pulse suggests that a number of emerging trends on the continent could help to transform its current state of development over the coming years. These include the promise of large revenues from mineral exploitation, rising incomes created by a dramatic expansion of agricultural productivity, the large-scale migration of people from the countryside into Africa’s towns and cities, and a demographic dividend potentially created by Africa’s fast-growing population of young people.

The African Development Bank (AfDB) has launched Open Data Platforms for the following 20 African countries: Algeria, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Malawi, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Ghana, Rwanda, Republic of Congo, Senegal, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The Open Data Platform program is part of the AfDB’s recently launched “Africa Information Highway” initiative aimed at significantly improving data management and dissemination in Africa. Work is on course to complete platforms for the rest of African countries by July 2013.

The Open Data Platform is a user-friendly tool for extracting data, creating and sharing own customized reports, and visualizing data across themes, sectors and countries in tables, charts and maps. Through the Open Data Platform, users can access a wide range of development data on African countries from multiple international and national official sources. The platform also facilitates the collection, analysis and sharing of data among countries and with international development partners. The platform offers a unique opportunity for various users, such as policymakers, analysts, researchers, business leaders and investors around the world, to gain access to reliable and timely data on Africa. Users can visualize time series development indicators over a period of time, perform comprehensive analysis at country and regional levels, utilize presentation-ready graphics or create their own, blog, and share their views and work with others, thereby creating an informed community of users.

The Open Data Platform initiative is a response by the African Development Bank Group aimed at significantly increasing access to quality data necessary for managing and monitoring development results in African countries, including the MDGs. It responds to a number of important global and regional initiatives to scale up the availability of quality data on Africa and so foster evidence-based decision-making, public accountability and good governance.

Once implemented, the Open Data Platform will be used by African countries for all data submission flows to the AfDB and possibly other international development partners, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), EU Commission, World Health Organization (WHO), UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), African Union Commission (AUC) and UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA). This initiative presents a unique opportunity for African countries to take the lead in implementation and promotion of international statistical standards across all countries in the region and in enhancing the quality of the data disseminated by African countries.

The initiative will also significantly revolutionize data management and dissemination in Africa, and reposition the continent for more effective participation in the global information economy.