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WEST AFRICA REGIONAL
>> Regional Overview >> West Africa Regional Program Overview Introduction
USAID has implemented and maintained sub-regional development programs throughout West Africa for the past 25 years. The West Africa Regional (WAR) program consolidates and coordinates the current regional activities - the Sahel Regional Program & the Family Health & AIDS Program - coupling them with a new activity to strengthen regional institutional governance capacity, for a more effective and rational approach to achieving development results in the region. The program builds upon previous USAID experience, which has led to a recognition that improving regional integration is an appropriate strategic approach for addressing the serious economic, political, and social development problems affecting the sixteen countries of West Africa.
U.S. interests in West Africa are based upon improving living standards for the poor by increasing food security, thereby reducing the need for costly emergency assistance programs; by promoting political stability; and by encouraging market-oriented development. Additionally, the WA region has been characterized by high fertility and mortality rates, and rapidly increasing HIV/AIDS prevalence rates - the mitigation of which has been identified as both a USAID Agency Goal and as a US National Interest priority as defined by the Strategic Plan for International Affairs Agencies (SPIA). Ongoing programs which address these concerns are the Sahel Regional Program (SRP) and Family Health and AIDS (FHA). The West Africa Regional Program will continue the objectives of these programs by supporting intra-regional dialogue and activities to improve regional cooperation in health and family planning issues, fostering economic growth, democratization, poverty reduction and increased food security. These regional efforts are beyond the scope of bi-lateral programs but vital to sustainable economic and social progress in the region and greatly enhance the prospects for the bilateral programs to succeed. Given the small size and interdependence of the national economies in the region, the critical development problems can be greatly advanced by taking a regional approach. These regional efforts, in the face of reduced bilateral presence are modest, but are vital to continued movement away from drought vulnerability and toward sustainable economic and social progress in the region. Without such progress regional conflicts resulting in large numbers of displaced persons, migration, and poverty could negate any successes in the bilateral programs.
The Development Challenge
Major political, social and economic indicators for West Africa describe a region that is poor and only very slowly improving. The natural resource base is deteriorating, corruption levels are high, and a large part of the population does not have access to safe water, adequate housing, job opportunities, sanitation, basic education or health care facilities. Political, civil and economic freedoms are below levels needed to assure political stability or lasting prosperity for the individuals in the region. Development in West Africa will progress at reasonable rates only if two fundamental conditions are met: (a) governance is significantly improved; and, (b) regional economic partnerships are forged. Weak governance, the lack of transparency and accountability are key factors in the equation that keeps West Africa poor. Among the most important of these are: political instability, capital scarcity, high transaction costs, low civic participation and low resource allocation to the social sectors. As a corollary, sustained progress in areas such as health, education, energy, food security, environmental protection and infrastructure will be impossible if these two basic conditions are not met. Regional and global integration and economic diversification must be improved before incomes can be expected to grow at levels needed to reduce poverty and assure political, social, and economic stability.
There is reason for optimism, however. Governments in the region established the Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS) in 1973, an intergovernmental organization which was created to increase coordination among CILSS states. CILSS is credited with helping to avert famine in the Sahel. Jointly, CILSS and the donors have established one of the best early warning/monitoring systems in Africa. More recently CILSS has provided technical support to its member states to help them prepare national action plans to support the Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD), and it has led the preparation of a sub-regional action plan. It is now embarked on a natural resource monitoring system under the CCD for West Africa. Finally, there is a growing emphasis in the region on private sector development and on greater participation at all levels of civil society. In this regard, CILSS initiated broad-based dialogue with Sahelian civil society to help it insure that its 1999-2001 work plan reflects the priorities and the vision of individuals and private and public sector institutions in the region. The challenge now is to deepen this collaboration to identify and implement programs to achieve the Sahelian vision of a federated, democratic, peaceful Sahel with sustainable growth and improved natural resource management, all in a regional context. The program also supports coordination among CILSS and the donors, for which the Club du Sahel (Club) was created in 1976.
In the health sector, the WA region has lagged behind the dramatic improvements in health achieved by other developing countries over the past 40 years. For example, whereas other developing regions achieved over 50% declines in infant mortality between 1960-1990, in this region infant mortality has only experienced a 10% decline over the same period. The population is growing at almost three percent per year and will likely double over the next 25 years. Thirty million people will likely migrate from the interior to the coastal areas between 1990 and 2020 thus placing extreme pressure on the already weak health service delivery systems in those countries. Immigrants make up 33% of the population of Cote d'Ivoire, contributing 1% to the almost 4% annual growth rate of the country. Cote d'Ivoire--the most important pole of regional economic development after Nigeria--has become the epicenter for the spread of HIV/AIDS throughout the region. The prevalence of HIV is estimated at 10% among the general population aged 15-49 years, and the combination of seasonal and permanent regional migration for work of young men and women contribute to the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. A major constraint to achieving and sustaining gains in the region is the very weak implementation capacity of public and private sector organizations due in part to the inability of organizations to recruit, retain and deploy qualified staff. Accordingly, there is low and ineffective use of available proven strategies, products, tools and approaches, and limited financial resources for improving the health status of the WA population.
Other Donors
Donor assistance accounts for approximately nine percent of the aggregate GDP of the West African countries. Of this amount, approximately half derives from multilateral sources and half from bilateral. The principal multilateral sources include the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the African Development Bank (AfDB), the UN agencies and the European Union (EU). USAID ranks fourth as a bilateral donor in the West Africa region, behind France, Germany, and Japan. Assistance levels by France are approximately seven times the U.S. level, and those of Germany and Japan approximately four times, and three and one-half times U.S. levels, respectively. Following USAID, the largest bilateral donors in the region are the Netherlands and Canada. Donors responded with increased country-by-country (as distinct from regional) assistance to individual West African states as the region slid into deep recession in the early 1980s. In current dollars, all donor assistance increased from $2.2 billion in 1980, to $5.8 billion in 1995.
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Last Updated on: November 09, 2000 |
