Affrican Development Bank awards US$1 million emergency relief assistance for drought victims in Somalia

A press release from the African Development Bank: The African Development Bank Group (AfDB) has awarded US $1 million emergency relief assistance to Somalia where over one million people affected by drought and famine are in dire need of humanitarian assistance.

The Emergency Humanitarian Relief Assistance to Victims of Drought in the country approved by the AfDB Board of Directors on Monday, February 9, 2015 will support the efforts being made by the Federal Government of Somalia in conjunction with the United Nations to provide urgent food aid distributions and food deliveries to drought-affected families in several parts of the country.

The grant has been mobilised from the Bank’s Special Relief Fund (SRF) and will be used to purchase food items, finance costs of transportation and distribution of food rations to the beneficiaries as well as administrative charges.

The assistance will be channeled through targeted food distribution to households affected by the drought, mainly vulnerable groups (like widows, orphans, female- and elderly-headed households) without alternative means of survival. Due to the imminent shortfalls, local and regional purchases, which have the added benefit of supporting the national and regional agricultural economies, will be made.

...According to United Nations statistics, some 9 to 10 million people in the Horn of Africa are in need of humanitarian assistance as a result of a severe drought, whose effects have been worsened by poor rains, conflict, trade disruptions and reduced humanitarian assistance in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Djibouti. Continued deterioration as a result of severe droughts in 2010 and 2011, coupled with poor humanitarian access and inadequate humanitarian assistance, culminated in the declaration of famine in southern Somalia in 2011, with more than 250,000 people, mainly women and children dying from hunger and decease....

A goatherd in Somalia, shot by Oxfam-East Africa Oxfam East Africa, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

African Development Bank meeting calls for equity in water use

AllAfrica.com via the New Times (Rwanda): Experts from the just concluded African Development Bank (AfDB) annual meetings have said that even with declining rainfall and unpredictable climate, African governments can still effectively manage and provide clean water.

The observation was made during a session dubbed 'Building Water Resilience,' where experts and government officials reflected on water-related challenges that Africa faces today and how they can be dealt with. Key issues ranged from cooperation between countries that share same water bodies to water security.

"We can't ignore the fact that water contributes highly to national economy. There are many public goods embedded in water, but the question here is how effective can it be allocated? The answer to this is devising a way in which the public sector can work with the private sector in water resource management and exploitation," said Prof Mike Muller, the Infrastructure Advisor, Development Bank of Southern Africa.

Muller cited the construction of Rusumo hydro power plant as one of the few examples where the private sector has been involved in water management through involvement of local people in the construction of the plant.

The high rate of urbanization is another challenge. Latest reports indicate that over 400 million Africans live in urban areas - close to 40% of Africa's population. In 50 years, about 65% of Africans will be living in urban areas...

Lake Mhindi in Rwanda, shot by Abhishek Singh, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under Creative Commons 2.0 license 

African Development Bank underscores crucial role of African knowledge on climate adaptation at “Africa Climate Conference 2013”

A press release from the African Development Bank: “Advancing African Climate Science Research and Knowledge to Inform Adaptation Decision-Making in Africa”, was the theme of the Africa Climate Conference (ACC 2013) held in Arusha, Tanzania from 15-18 October.  The event that was co-sponsored by the African Development Bank (AfDB) sought to strengthen the link between the generation of climate knowledge and the needs of climate information users for timely, reliable and predictable information.

As an experienced knowledge-broker in climate change and a high performer in climate finance, AfDB’s role during the conference was to give inputs to set an agenda on climate research. This agenda is meant to bridge the gap between social and biophysical research, and between research and application, towards delivery of a co-ordinated climate research agenda for Africa that brings together research outputs with user needs.

The AfDB also organized a side event to share lessons and experiences on integrating climate information into national development planning processes. It featured the work of the AfDB’s climate finance team in the Energy, Environment and Climate Change Department jointly with the Agriculture and Agro-Industries Department in designing the Strategic Programs for Climate Resilience (SPCR). The programs were developed for the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR) for the pilot countries in Africa including Niger, Mozambique and Zambia.

The meeting provided an opportunity for conference participants to understand how climate information was integrated into the SPCRs of the three pilot countries in Africa. With PPCR support, Mozambique, Niger and Zambia are undertaking scaled-up climate action and transformational change by integrating climate resilience in their national development planning....

AfDB and Global Environment Facility to strengthen climate change adaptation with USD 33.58 million

African Development Bank: The Global Environment Facility Council has approved a grant of USD 11.3 million, to be channeled through the AfDB, for climate adaptation activities in Cameroon, Djibouti and Kenya. 

The Council’s Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) and Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF) will finance the Rural Livelihoods’ Adaptation to Climate Change Program in Djibouti and Kenya. For the first phase of the program, Kenya and Djibouti will receive grants of USD 2.5 million and USD 5.07 million, respectively. The program will increase the resilience of pastoralists to the effects of climate change effects on the region.

The SCCF will also provide a grant of USD 4.03 million for a project to enhance the resilience of poor communities to urban flooding in Yaoundé, Cameroon. This project will strengthen institutional capacity to improve long-term resilience to flood risk, improve the readiness and adaptive capacity of local communities to the risk of flooding, and help pay for flood control technologies.

The GEF Council also approved financing, from the LDCF, for projects in Angola and Madagascar. In Angola, a USD 4.41 million grant will enable the Bank to implement a project to integrate climate change into management of the environment and adoption of sustainable land management practices. The project will disseminate sustainable land management and adaptation practices in agro-forestry and land ecology in 350 communities.

In Madagascar, a USD 6.27 million grant will support the development of climate resilience in the agriculture sector in the country’s southwest region. This project will strengthen the resilience of water supply infrastructure over 10,200 hectares of agricultural land in the Bas Mangoky region....

African Development Bank renews support of climate change resilience with additional resources from Least Developed Countries Fund

AllAfrica.com via the African Development Bank: The African Development Bank, renewed its support for climate change resilience in Madagascar, Benin and Angola in accessing US $17.8 million of adaptation finance in the form of grants from the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) during the second quarter of 2013. It follows the approval last March of US $18.6 million for three water and sanitation projects.

Madagascar will receive US $6.2 million to promote climate change adaptation by ensuring (a) that agricultural water infrastructure planned with African Development Fund support is modified so as to be resilient in the face of climate change; (b) that the vulnerability of the agriculture catchment to cyclones and flooding is reduced, and (c) that local agricultural livelihoods are adapted to climate change through water management and health interventions.

Benin will receive US $7.2 million to allow flood control and climate resilience of agriculture infrastructures in Oueme Valley. Under this project, flooding risk mapping and climate resilient agriculture infrastructures like dykes will be promoted along with flood resistant grain storage systems.

Angola will receive US $4.4 million to increase the scope of the four pilot demonstration centres to climate change technology for sustainable development.

The Council of the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF), hosted under the Global Environment Facility (GEF), has approved financing totaling US $17.8 million for three agriculture and natural resource management projects. These projects aim at increasing the adaptation capacities of three African countries....

Climate change fund for Africa becomes operational In 2013

Edmund Smith-Asante in SpyGhana: The fourth meeting of the Board of Programme Directors of the Climate for Development in Africa Initiative (Clim-Dev) has been held in the Tunisian capital Tunis. Hosted by the African Development Bank (AfDB), on March 6 and 7, 2013,  the high-level meeting marked a turning point in Africa’s fight against climate change, particularly in Africa itself.

As a result of the meeting, the Clim-Dev Special Fund (CDSF) – an ad hoc investment fund set aside to finance climate change activities in Africa, becomes operational this year. According to AfDB, in addition to the Fund, resources and the possibility of disseminating robust and viable statistical data on climate and its evolution in Africa, CDSF will finance concrete operations on the ground.

Meanwhile, 14 projects are being reviewed under the Climate for Development initiative in Africa currently....

African Development Bank delegation takes part in first workshop on long-term finance on climate change

AllAfrica.com via the African Development Bank: The first workshop on long-term finance related to climate change in a series initiated at the COP 17 conference in Durban in 2011 took place in Bonn, Germany, from 9 to 11 July 2012.

The establishment of a work programme including workshops, on long-term finance in 2012 was one of the decisions taken in Durban. The aim of this work programme is to contribute to the on-going efforts to scale up the mobilization of climate change finance after 2012. The work programme analyses options for the mobilization of resources from a wide variety of sources, inclu ding public and private, bilateral and multilateral and alternative sources.

Relevant analytical work on climate-related financing needs of developing countries is also being conducted under this work programme. The analysis draws upon relevant reports including that of the High-level Advisory Group on Climate Financing, whose membership included the president of the African Development Bank Group president, Donald Kaberuka, as well as the report on mobilizing climate finance for the Group of Twenty, which included AfDB staff among the contributors. These reports provide the criteria for assessing the various sources of finance as well as the lessons learned from the experience of fast-start finance to date. The work programme will host two workshops on long-term finance during the course of the year.

The Bonn workshop brought together senior representatives from Parties, financial institutions, private sector executives, civil society and academia. Professor Jeffrey Sachs, from the Earth Institute, Columbia University, gave the keynote speech on the economics of climate change.

His speech highlighted the need for as assessment rule on an individual country basis, based on carbon emissions (polluter pays principle) and ability to pay. His concluding remarks portrayed the emerging Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as the potential stimulus for local to national planning, as climate change mitigation and adaptation programs are highly context specific, requiring detailed costed plans from local to national levels....

Development banks agree on common reporting method for adaptation finance

AllAfrica.com's sponsor wire: After months of collaboration and research, the African Development Bank (AfDB) and five other multilateral development banks (MDBs) have come to various agreements on a protocol and process for adaptation finance reporting. This is a move considered critical to the MDBs' efforts to monitor and evaluate financial resources for climate change.

This progress came at the MDB Adaptation Finance Tracking Workshop, led by the AfDB on 22 May on the sidelines of the Climate Change Conference of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), held from14 to 25 May in Bonn, Germany. The MDBs agreed on the adaptation concept that they will adopt, as well as the high level principles of the joint methodology, and a roadmap to test and disclose the methodology by the 2012 UN Climate Change Conference (COP18) in late November.

"Having a joint MDB methodology for tracking aid spending that contributes to climate change adaptation means the MDBs and development partners can engage in substantive analysis of climate finance. We will be better able to measure, report and verify climate financial flows and the results they support," stated Mafalda Duarte, AfDB Chief Climate Change Specialist...

A Burroughs Accounting Machine, shot by Chris Kennedy, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license