BY CHUKS OLUIGBO
The World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) is looking to disburse 70 percent (or $65 billion) of its $93 billion global fund in Africa, and Nigeria is expected to get the biggest chunk of the 70 percent.
The fund was launched at the IDA Summit for Africa in Dakar, Senegal on Thursday, with Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari in attendance alongside other African heads of state.
The $93 billion replenishment package of the IDA, announced by the World Bank in December 2021, is meant to help low-income countries respond to the COVID-19 crisis and build a greener, more resilient, and inclusive future.
When it was announced, the World Bank had said the fund, “the largest ever mobilized in IDA’s 61-year history”, would be delivered to the world’s 74 poorest countries under the 20th replenishment (IDA20) program, which focuses on helping countries recover from the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis.
“In these countries, the ongoing pandemic is worsening poverty, undermining growth, and jeopardizing the prospects of a resilient and inclusive development,” the World Bank said.
“Countries are struggling with falling government revenues; increasing debt vulnerabilities; rising risks to fragility, conflict, and instability; and dropping literacy rates. About a third of IDA countries are facing a looming food crisis,” it said.
The World Bank said while IDA20 would support countries globally, Africa would receive about 70 percent of the funding.
Following the launch on fund in Dakar on Thursday, Garba Shehu, senior special assistant to President Buhari on Media and Publicity, announced in a statement that Nigeria’s would be getting the biggest share of the $65 billion coming to Africa.
The statement, titled “At Dakar summit, Nigeria gets a big slice of IDA financial package”, quoted Buhari, who spoke at the Opening Dialogue of African Heads of State on Development Challenges and Priorities at the IDA Summit, as saying that the package would prioritise some key areas such as “agriculture and food security, human capital, climate change adaptation, bridging the gender gap, job creation, digital and technological innovation, among others”.
Buhari explained the importance of the IDA fund at a time Africa has been placed in a bad financial state by the COVID-19 pandemic, with the Russia-Ukraine conflict worsening developing countries’ challenges.
Africa’s challenges, he said, include “prolonged severe food crisis, dwindling government revenue, rising levels of unemployment, widening infrastructural needs over the past three years and the consequences of a preponderant debt burden, in efforts to mitigate these problems”.
“As African countries continue to grapple with the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and now the Russian-Ukraine war, the continued support from the World Bank Group, particularly from the IDA, is critical to help us meet financial needs,” Buhari said.
He called for concerted global efforts involving governments, farmers, investors, multilateral organizations, regional bodies, international financial institutions, private partners and civil societies to mitigate and sustain food systems.
On the part of Nigeria, Buhari said the country, through job creation, was determined to build an economy that is capable of withstanding shocks.
“Our focus is on the transformative scale-up of industrialisation, to be driven by backward integration and export development based on value-addition to key commodities and access to new markets,” he said.
IDA is a World Bank member and also a global credit institution that financially supports world’s poorest developing countries with loans and grants.
