G5 Sahel: AfDB raises about $270 mln to strengthen infrastructure & resilience
The African Development Bank (AfDB) has announced a contribution of $267 million to finance the implementation of the Priority Investment Program (PIP) of the G5 Sahel.
The Priority Investment Program is a 14.8-billion-dollar program addressing development needs in governance, security, economic resilience, and infrastructure in the Sahel region.
The program aims to improve the living conditions of people in cross-border areas by ensuring better access to water and sanitation, by building the resilience of agricultural communities to food insecurity, and through conflict prevention measures.
The Sahel G5 was established in February 2014 in Nouakchott by Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger with the aim of fostering economic development in the Sahel through an effective cooperation on security, economic resilience, infrastructure development, and management of water resources.
At the strategic level, the AfDB plans to finance two priority areas: “Resilience and Development” and “Infrastructure”, advocating for major regional initiatives, such as the regional “Desert to Power” project and the Great Green Wall.
The “Desert to Power” initiative spans 11 countries: Burkina Faso, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Sudan, Djibouti, Senegal and Chad. It will have a significant impact on the standard of living of 250 million people.
The goal is to install 10 gigawatts of solar capacity between now and 2030, a big step towards the achievement of the Bank’s High 5 goals, since access to energy cuts across all Africa’s development needs.
The Great Green Wall, an African-led movement, launched a decade ago aims to drive forward climate-smart solutions and bring life back to degraded landscapes in order to provide food security, jobs and new economies for the communities living in Africa’s Sahel region.
Influential leaders from business, politics, media, the film and music industries gathered at Goals House in New York on September 22, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, highlighted the Great Green Wall as a practical, low-cost nature-based solution in responding to the “global climate emergency”.
Participants called on governments, civil society and business to join a growing global movement to make the Great Green Wall a reality by 2030. An estimated 15% of the Wall is already under way.
Nearly 80% of land in the Sahel, where the Great Green Wall is taking root, are degraded and 33-million people are currently food insecure. If nothing is done, the situation will worsen as temperatures are expected by rise by as much as between 3 °C and 5 °C by 2050.
