AfDB launches country focus reports for Africa
THE African Development Bank (AfDB) has launched Country Focus Reports (CFRs) that seek to deepen policy dialogue on the macro-economic performance and outlook of individual countries in Africa.
The CFRs also provide guidance on mobilising private sector and natural capital finance to drive the continent’s climate resilience and green growth policies.
Zimbabwe, which is a member of AfDB is expected to benefit from its CFR as the initiative has come at an opportune time when the Second Republic has embarked on an economic reform journey. Thus, the AfDB initiative would foster policy dialogue on individual countries.
For Zimbabwe, it could give impetus to the country’s sustainable economic development agenda anchored on the National Development Strategy (NDS1), the first five-year development agenda running up to 2025 and NDS2, to be implemented from 2026 to 2030 where the country seeks to achieve an upper middle income society.
Under NDS1, the targeted areas include economic growth and stability, food and nutrition security, governance, human capital development, environmental protection, housing delivery, digital economy, health, infrastructure development, international engagement and re-engagement drive, social protection and devolution.
AfDB is one of the champions of Zimbabwe’s debt resolution process, which should lessen the impact of the heavy debt on the country and reopen access to concessionary funding.
In a statement, AfDB said the 2024 reports assess the experiences of individual countries in accessing finance necessary to fund their structural transformation and call for an overhaul of the global financial architecture to help turn around African economies.
“The AfDB has launched Country Focus Reports designed to deepen policy dialogue on the macroeconomic performance and outlook of individual countries and to act as an indispensable tool for policy makers, government and development partners,” it said.
AfDB chief economist and vice president for economic governance and knowledge management Professor Kevin Chika Urama said: “The reports make bold recommendations for financing structural transformation at country level through reforms of the global financial architecture to better respond to African countries’ growing development financing needs, exacerbated by recurrent global and domestic shocks.”
The regional financier said in line with the theme of the 2024 African Economic Outlook report titled, “Driving Africa’s Transformation: The Reform of the Global Financial Architecture,” the reports give deeper country-by-country specific dynamics and insights.
And the African Economic Outlook report, issued annually, provides timely evidence and analysis on the continent’s growth, empowering African policymakers to make informed decisions.
Growth performance and outlook vary across the 54 African countries of the report, reflecting differences in economic structure, commodity dependence, and policies.
All 54 reports document funding needs and gaps as well as inadequacies of the current global financial system in supporting Africa’s structural transformation up to 2063.
The reports make recommendations across five key areas that include — leveraging private sector financing, where players from that sector are expected to remain key partners in financing African economies; ramping up climate finance with African countries expected to contribute the least to climate crisis, yet they are the most affected; reforming multilateral development banks where the institutions are required to revise their business models to provide long-term concessional financing at scale to countries on the continent.
“In summary, these reports contain pragmatic policies (short, medium and long-term) to accelerate African countries’ economic growth and structural transformation.
“They also provide governments and potential investors with up-to-date, accurate data to inform policy and investment decisions,” said AfDB.-newsda
