Nigeria, last week, joined the rest of the member-nations of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) in Khartoum, Sudan, to review the bank's activities and chart a new course for it for the future. Vice-President Namadi Sambo was there to canvass the country's position. Leon Usigbe, who attended the two-day 37th Annual Meeting, writes on the benefit of the yearly event for the Transformation Agenda of the present administration.VICE President Namadi Sambo was in Khartoum, Sudan, last week, as the head of Nigerian delegation to the 37th Annual Meeting of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), as well as being the special guest of honour at the opening ceremony of the IDB Board of Governors' meeting. President Omar Hassan al Bashir of the Republic of Sudan presided over the ceremony of the highly anticipated two-day event that was also attended by ministers of Finance, Economy and Planning and hundreds of delegates from the 56 IDB member-countries.Several high profile events took place at the sidelines of the meeting itself, including the 282nd meeting of IDB Board of Executive Directors, the meeting of the Board of Directors of the Islamic Solidarity Fund for Development (ISDF), the Private Sector Clients Day and the special meeting of the IDB African Governors' Group on the Special Programme for Development (SPDA). IDB is a multilateral development financing institution located in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, founded by the first conference of Finance Ministers of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), now the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, in 1973.The bank, which officially began its activities in 1975, has 56 shareholding member states on the basis of paid-up capital. The basic condition for membership is that the prospective member country should be a member of the OIC, pay its contribution to the capital of the bank and be willing to accept such terms and conditions as may be decided upon by the IDB Board of Governors.Vice-President Sambo delivered the keynote address at the special meeting of the African Governors Forum on the SPDA where he canvassed the position of Nigeria and noted with delight, the IDB decision to aligned its three-year work programme worth $2billion in implementation support with the Transformation Agenda of the present administration for the period, 2012-2014. In the address titled 'African Development Experience: What Successful Experiences to Replicate and Scale up,' the vice-president explained the core provisions of the Transformation Agenda, as he thanked the IDB president, Dr Ahmad Mohammed Ali, for its decision to identify with the objectives of the Agenda.While noting the problems of developing countries and efforts to solve them, Sambo told his audience that the Transformation Agenda of the present administration in Nigeria was anchored on five pillars, including accelerating and sustaining economic growth; improving and modernising infrastructure; strengthening human capital stock and enhancing access to social services; improving governance and increasing competitiveness; and reinforcing social cohesion and mainstreaming cross cutting issues. Sambo did not fail to mention that implementation reviews had confirmed that significant private sector participation and financial support from development partners were critical, especially in the Priority Action Plan.On the political and social fronts, he similarly observed, the African continent was still evolving and reeling from some complex and multi-dimensional challenges, especially how to eradicate poverty and provide decent and better lives and opportunities for the teeming population across the continent.According to him, 'it is on record that Africa is the only region in the world that is off-track in achieving most of the targets set in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), particularly in the areas of the mainstream inclusive growth, provision of basic services (infrastructure, water, sanitation, education and hospitals) and reversion of the spread of diseases, tackling of poverty, job creation and security.'African countries cannot do all these things alone; they need help and assistance from development partners. The prospect of this veritable source of support is fast becoming less reliable, no thanks to the failure, so far, to comprehensively resolve the high incidence of debts and deficits in Japan, the United State of America and some European Union member countries.The unpalatable fallout of this sudden shock is the declining flow of grants and Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) to the continent of Africa. To address this gap therefore, African countries were left with no option than to embark on far-reaching economic transformation policies designed to promote private sector driven growth, strengthen regional integration, facilitate cross-border trade and harness economies of scale.'Sambo challenged the IDB, the African Development Bank (ADB) and other multi-lateral development agencies to be more creative in their interventions towards ensuring that the continent was put back on track to achieve the MDGs. He informed the meeting that Nigeria was in the second year of its Medium Term (2011-2015) Development Strategy (MTDs), which he stressed spelled out the key milestones of the Transformation Agenda that drew inspiration from the Vision 20:2020. On the SPDA-I which covers the period 2008-2012, the vice-president observed that it has proved to be a remarkable initiative of IDB, as it had made appreciable impact on poverty reduction and promotion of sustainable economic growth while also supporting regional integration in African member countries.He thought it was encouraging to note that, so far, the bank had committed about $8 billion under the programme, while SPDA-II, the envisaged successor, is to span another five years (2013-2017). Sambo advised the IDB that in developing the SPDA-II, it was important to draw lessons and best practices from SPDA-I, while also benchmarking similar programmes by other development finance organisations.The vice-president highlighted the experiences of Nigeria in setting up the Nigeria Trust Fund (NTF) at the ADB and the journey so far and urged SPDA, as a special programme, to endeavour to develop its peculiar procedures as well as make concerted efforts to draw up country-specific sectoral priorities.He counseled: 'In drawing up SPDA-II therefore, there is the need to know what worked and what did not work under SPDA-I; what impact was made, how many people have been lifted out of poverty and in which sectors has it made the most significant difference in member countries.'Was SPDA-I able to mobilize enough resources from external sources' What went wrong and what can be done to improve on the resource mobilisation from other donors and development partners' What are the key performance indicators for the amount of resources leveraged from other sources for SPDA-I''The IDB President, Dr Ali, was delighted at the presence of Vice- President Sambo which he saw as an indication of the attention Nigeria was paying to Islamic affairs and IDB's initiatives, especially as he observed that development was a collective effort. Dr Ali said IDB was determined to step up efforts to remove obstacles to development and eliminate poverty in its member countries.Sambo used the opportunity of his address as the Special Guest of Honour during the official opening ceremony of the 37th Annual Meeting of the IDB on this second appearance at the two-day event to also express Nigeria's close identification with the primary aims and objectives of the IDB Group as he observed that 'no endeavour is more worthwhile than the development of human capital, investing in poverty alleviation, advancing the frontiers of Science and Technology, improving our individual economy and, economies of member countries and by extension the global economy,' stressing that 'these objectives are in line with the Federal Government of Nigeria's Transformation Agenda.'Sambo further noted that Africa, particularly Sub ' Saharan Africa, had keen interest in programmes that focused particularly on poverty alleviation and the promotion of the economic and social developments of the vulnerable segment of its population.It is in this vein that he appreciated the IDB Group for the support it has always given to development initiatives in Africa and he requested for its continuous support for the implementation of the SPDA II.Some of the benefits of the Annual Meeting held in Khartoum included the approval of the Board of Executive Directors of the IDB of $389.3million (about N60.9billion) of new financing to support development drive in member-countries and Muslim communities in different parts of the world, including Nigeria. The board similarly approved grants up to $867million (about N134.3billion) for educational and health projects for Muslim communities in the United States of America, Denmark, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe.It was in recognition of the gains that would accrue to Nigeria, especially the Transformation Agenda of the present administration, that the vice-president assured the bank of Nigeria's continued support and commitment towards building a stronger partnership and institution that would drive and provide the much needed developmental needs of its member-countries.
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