By Karen Rot-Munstermann Acting Evaluator General, African Development Bank. This article was prepared ahead of the African Development Bank Annual Meetings 2019 which took place in Malabo, Equatirial Guinea from 11 to 14 June 2019 under the theme Regional Integration for Africa's Economic Prosperity. Photo credit: AfDB communications department.
To achieve inclusive development in African nations, the African Development Bank has identified five priority areas (High 5s) that guide the implementation of its Ten-Year Strategy (2013-2022): Light up and power Africa; Feed Africa; Industrialize Africa; Integrate Africa; and Improve the quality of life for the people of Africa. With regard to regional integration, the Bank’s focus is on building a stable, integrated and prosperous Africa comprised of competitive, diversified and sustainable economies that are fully active in the global trade and investment market.
Furthermore, fostering regional integration has been a fundamental priority of the African Development Bank since 1963. Indeed, Article 2 of the Agreement Establishing the African Development Bank recommends paying special attention to the selection of suitable Multinational Operations (MOs), defined as projects covering at least two countries. In line with this recommendation, the Bank has in recent years reinforced its strategic and operational assistance to projects and initiatives fostering regional integration in Africa. In this context, it first approved a continent-wide Regional Integration Strategy in 2009, followed by regional integration strategy papers for four of its five regions - Eastern, Central, Western and Southern Africa - in 2011[1] and a regional integration policy and strategy for the period 2014-2023.
Independent Development Evaluation at the African Development Bank (IDEV)2 contributes to the Bank’s work in this area by assessing its policies, strategies and operations to support greater regional integration. Between 2012 and 2018, IDEV undertook four evaluations in this area:
- Addressing Regional Integration Challenges in Central Africa: Evaluation of the Regional Integration Strategy and Operations of the African Development Bank, 2018
- Independent Evaluation of the African Development Bank's Regional Integration Strategy Paper for Eastern Africa, 2017
- Strategizing for the “Africa We Want”: Independent Evaluation of the Quality at Entry of Country and Regional Integration Strategies, 2014
- Fostering Regional Integration in Africa: An Evaluation of the Bank’s Multinational Operations, 2012
These evaluations offer an opportunity for the Bank to learn from past experience and provide a number of issues for consideration, of which the most important are the following:
Policy Relevance and Adequacy
The Bank has developed an increasingly coherent strategic and operational framework to guide its operations supporting regional integration. The framework has been particularly useful in strengthening the Bank’s strategic vision and its capacity to be selective when financing MOs through the African Development Fund. These evaluations find that the Bank could further focus its efforts on financing regional infrastructure and on building the capacity of regional economic communities. Improved physical connectivity and trade-related infrastructure are necessary for trade to expand and to contribute to economic growth and poverty reduction. However, investing in this type of infrastructure does not guarantee that trade opportunities will materialize: other binding constraints (such as legal and illegal trade barriers) also need to be addressed.
The importance of the private sector and civil society has been repeatedly highlighted in the Bank’s regional integration strategies and operations. However, more efforts are needed to truly involve non-state actors in them. In addition, the incentive structure and modalities for engaging with non-state actors can be improved.
Performance of Operations supporting Regional Integration
The evaluations find that the performance of the Bank’s infrastructure operations in support of regional integration tends to be satisfactory whereas the performance of capacity building interventions shows room for improvement. They show that it is possible to assess the performance of infrastructure operations in terms of outputs such as kilometers of road constructed or rehabilitated or of fiber-optic cable laid, the number of megawatts of electricity produced/transported, etc. In contrast, there is often a lack of documentation and statistics that measure MOs’ effectiveness in terms of outcomes such as volume of intraregional trade, access to electricity and telecommunication networks, and economic growth.
Where MOs were underperforming, the evaluations find that this is mainly due to factors such as weak design, limited country ownership, weak human capacity (skills and staffing) in regional organizations and other implementing agencies, and inadequate Bank responsiveness to the requests from project implementation units. Another challenge concerns the sustainability of outputs and outcomes: project proposals often lack estimates of future costs and do not plan for future phases of the operations which, by their nature, respond to long term issues.
The Bank mainly supports regional integration through regional economic communities (RECs). However, African RECs are challenged by structural weaknesses that undermine their capacity to effectively foster regional integration. They also face financial sustainability issues, as some African countries fail to pay the community tax to RECs on time. Finally, some RECs suffer from weak project implementation capacity. Therefore, the evaluations recommend that the Bank (i) assists RECs in establishing specialized project implementation units staffed with experienced personnel to manage project implementation, which could be focal points for all donors implementing regional operations through RECs; and (ii) helps establish monitoring and evaluation units within RECs for collecting data on regional project outcomes and for continuously monitoring the regional integration progress.
Policy Dialogue and Coordination
The evaluations find that the contribution of MOs to regional integration and ultimately to the economic transformation of Africa is more likely to be sustainable if governments adopt accompanying measures and policy reforms at the country level. In addition, high-level dialogues and advocacy programs by the Bank are required to champion and strengthen regional integration.
At the country level, the evaluations find that donors are increasingly working together on developing and implementing sectoral programs (e.g. energy, transport, water), but there are often no formal platforms for regional donor coordination: there is thus an opportunity for improvement.
Through financing of national and multinational infrastructure and capacity-building projects, the Bank aims not only for increased cross-border trade in goods and services but also for improved mobility of people and investment across the African continent. The Bank can draw on its rich history of supporting regional integration, independent evaluations, research and other analytical work for lessons about what has worked, what has not, and why, to inform its future interventions. Addressing the identified issues and challenges will be key for the successful implementation of the Bank’s regional integration strategies.
Also, watch Karen's video message to AfDBAM2019 participants
[1] The strategy for North Africa was not developed due to the Arab Spring at the time.
[2] Independent Development Evaluation at the African Development Bank carries out independent evaluations of Bank operations, policies and strategies, working across projects, sectors, themes, regions, and countries. By conducting independent evaluations and proactively sharing best practice, IDEV ensures that the Bank and its stakeholders learn from past experience and plan and deliver development activities to the highest possible standards.