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With the IDA17 replenishment recently finalized, regional and national IDA resources will be made available. Given the ambitious scale of this plan, leveraging finance from other sources, including donors and the private sector, will be a key feature of its implementation, particularly in Somalia, Eritrea, and Sudan, which are in non-accrual status with the WBG.
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Managing implementation will be challenging, and the WBG is committed to ensuring that all projects and programs announced under the initiative are committed within roughly 24 months after the high-level visit. The implementation of the development plan will be the subject of regular internal review and scrutiny. The first review will be initiated six months after the plan has been adopted through a report to be submitted to the Board.
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Maintaining momentum on the political and diplomatic front is a key objective of the initiative. Only the region’s leaders, working collaboratively, can solve the more intractable problems for which political and policy change is required. The WBG will join other partners, within its mandate, to support IGAD in facilitating this process, which will include regular meetings of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, in addition to regular meetings of Ministers of Finance and relevant sector ministries. It is proposed that the inaugural meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs will take place at the time of the high-level visit, and thereafter an appropriate framework will be put in place for follow up and monitoring.
Annex XXIII.PARTNERSHIPS AND COORDINATION
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Partnerships are critical to successful delivery. The initiative strives to take advantage of new opportunities arising from regional leadership and political developments on the ground, and the growing resolve of the international community to support more ambitious efforts to solve problems in the region, while giving those efforts a greater international profile. Operationally, the initiative is expected to facilitate increased support to the region from multiple stakeholders, to promote a greater degree of alignment and collaboration in areas of mutual interest, and, importantly, to encourage more operations that promote more cross-border solutions to long-standing problems of poverty. Timely and efficient operations that deliver results quickly will require effective partnerships in which some institutions are best placed to lead, and others to contribute. The WBG is not best placed to lead on everything; therefore, with IGAD, it will promote these partnerships.
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On the security agenda, the AU, IGAD, UN, and EU are key partners and interlocutors. For example, IGAD’s Security Sector Program of 2011 provides a framework for aligning and harmonizing specific security and development actions agreed by the countries of the region.52 The EU continues to play a leading role at the political level and by financing concrete peace and security initiatives in the HoA. The EU adopted a Strategic Framework for the HoA on November 14, 2011, that underlines the need to address the links among insecurity, poverty, and governance. An EU Special Representative (EUSR) for the Horn has been appointed to contribute to the implementation of the Framework, working closely with the EUSR for Sudan and South Sudan. In all these contexts, development is seen as a medium- to longer-term approach to counterterrorism and prevention of violent extremism.53
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Partner-led dialogue to unlock political bottlenecks and facilitate more economically sound cross-border solutions is as important as the financial investments in concrete projects and programs. It will require considerable technical support to ensure that high-level dialogue is well informed and is sustained. Sustained diplomacy at the highest levels will also be required to help build trust between neighboring governments to resolve conflicts—such as the latent conflict between Djibouti and Eritrea, the unresolved border dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and the active conflict in South Sudan.
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IGAD capacity needs to be strengthened. It is important that IGAD be supported by its member states and development partners to enable it to effectively plan, coordinate, and monitor the processes required to further integration. Africa’s current integration landscape contains an array of RECs, including eight considered to be the building blocks of the African Economic Community; IGAD, one of these eight, has a stated ambition to achieve peace, prosperity, and regional integration among its member states. IGAD has a growing influence on the regional process in the Horn—partly through its regional peace and security activities, which continue to gain in importance and stem from the recognition that national security interests are intimately connected across the region, but also through its important activities and programs in support of drought disaster resilience and sustainability, and its growing number of activities in support of economic integration. Support to IGAD will require a closer working relationship with the WBG, which will require a great deal of dedicated time and resources. The initiative will consider what support the IGAD Secretariat might require to enable it to deliver effectively on the work that this initiative will bring.
Annex XXIV.RESULTS FRAMEWORK
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A results framework for the initiative will be developed once the operations have been agreed.
Annex XXV.Applying Lessons from the Great Lakes and Sahel Initiatives, and the 2011 Drought Emergency Response
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This initiative needed to raise the profile of security issues, a problem which is more complex and pronounced in the region. The region suffers from the twin problems of ongoing conflict, border tensions, and an increasing terrorist threat from the extremists. Increased security, which is a function of the state will have fiscal implications, and given the dynamics of violence, will demand a more integrated and coordinated regional approach to addressing vulnerability, fragility and conflict, in particular through the need to implement projects which bring about collective cross-border action. Notwithstanding the timeliness of the Horn of Africa drought response package in 2011, the intervention was a series of multi-country operations with only one regional project which is still under preparation54.
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The institutional context is more coherent with all target countries being members of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD). IGAD has, in particular, comparative advantage in peace and security issues and will be a key partner and driving force for the initiative helping with its convening capacity to bring coherence to substantive political discussions which are required to bring multiple stakeholders together to build trust and form consensus on security and development investment plans. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has a played a similar role under the Sahel initiative, though in the Great Lakes reaching consensus initially proved more challenging given the overlapping mandates of multiple regional organizations
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The importance of a strong analytical underpinning. The challenges and opportunities of the Horn region are relatively under-studied and are most often looked at through a national lens, in particular on issues such as forced displacement, fragility and the security - development relationship at border zones. The initiative has made a head start on starting to fill some of the important knowledge gaps through the early commissioning of AAA in order to inform operational choices both of the WBG, though also with the intention of influencing those of other development partners. In the Sahel two international conferences, one on pastoralism and another on irrigation, performed a similar function whilst in the Great Lakes a ‘conflict filter’ has been developed and is being applied to our investment program.
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The importance of engaging with the extractives industry. A wave of new natural resource discoveries across the region has the potential to transform some economies of the region. If used well, revenues could provide a route out of fragility, and help to build essential infrastructure and extend public services. The oil and gas industry in particular looks certain to be very important through the development and operation of new production sites and transport infrastructure, making engagement with the industry as well as bilateral countries where most companies are listed will be important, for example, Arab states, Australia, UK, Canada, Norway and South Africa.
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Be pragmatic and keep it simple - bigger more complex projects equal bigger problems for both clients and the Bank. Regional projects are by their nature inherently complex for a combination of technical, social, financial, legal, policy, organizational, time horizons, multi-sector, and often multi-financier reasons. However many countries in the Horn region have weak procurement, FM and project management capacity and large, technically complex operations can be particularly difficult to implement. Reducing complexity will be important to value for money considerations, not least more efficient delivery, and also the ability to demonstrate results.
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Strengthening existing partnerships and building new ones is essential to successful delivery. IGAD has a key role to play in facilitating and advocating for political solutions, and also in being focused and bringing coherence to on-going resilience efforts which are substantial. Certain operational aspects of programming will demand greater collaboration between the UN and WBG systems for delivery of rapid results, and also civil society and the private sector for the delivery of essential services in remote regions and job creation. Unlike in the Sahel and Great Lakes the initiative also demands a closer engagement with Arab Funds given their cultural and geo-political ties to the region, financing envelopes and ability to operate in countries where the WBG presence is absent.
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Good communication is essential. The initiative will be supported by a structured communications plan which will identify target audiences and have the objectives of i) providing information, ii) increasing awareness, iii) encouraging action, iv) building consensus, v) influencing behavior ,and v) promoting participation. The Great Lakes initiative in particular highlighted the importance of early communication with careful messaging to avoid any miscommunication about WBG financing commitments and the aims and objectives of the initiative.
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The initiative will have a results framework, and will learn from the challenges of ongoing efforts to develop such frameworks for the Great Lakes and Sahel initiatives. It is important that the WBG is able to demonstrate measurable results with clear linkages between investments and poverty reduction, and which is aligned with its new corporate focus on linking solutions to results. The initiative will build-in an institutional mechanism for monitoring and evaluation, mirroring the role of coordination group for the Sahel and the role being played by the office of UN Special Envoy to the Great Lakes region which is based in Nairobi.
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