IDA21 MEETING: Samia: Honour your pledges
Naironi, KENYA: PRESIDENT Dr Samia Suluhu Hassan has called upon partners of the International Development Association (IDA) to honour their pledges to foster economic development and improve living conditions.
President Samia also called for an ambitious replenishment of the IDA21 that matches Africa’s development aspirations with resource needs.
Dr Samia made the call on Monday during the opening session of the IDA21 summit in Nairobi, which was attended by African Heads of State and governments. IDA supports low-income countries with grants and long-term lowinterest loans for development.
Speaking about the last IDA20 meeting, President Samia said that among other things, the meeting highlighted the importance of IDA financing.
“To emphasise the need for an ambitious IDA21 replenishment, Tanzania reiterated its appreciation for IDA collaboration which has helped to improve maternal and child health indicators, rural electrification rates, access to safe drinking water and economic recovery more broadly,” Dr Samia said.
The Tanzania leader said that history attests to the transformative potential of IDA support for countries to transform and graduate.
“We believe that it should be a collective effort to highlight both the impactful success stories of IDA and potential that IDA still has. Indeed, IDA has great potential to help its recipients leverage resources from other partners,” she stated.
Drawing an example from Tanzania, Dr Samia said that the country has an infrastructure project in Dar es Salaam known as Msimbazi Basin Development Project which benefited from World Bank support worth 2 million US dollars (about 5.2bn/-).
She said that in having secured resources, Tanzania has been able to leverage an additional 6 million US dollars (about 15.54bn/-) from other partners for the project which aims at strengthening flooding of land resilience and integrated urban development in the country’s economic hub.
Dr Samia said that in a bid to consolidate and build on successes obtained during IDA20, the countries are pleased to advance on the important dialogue on IDA21.
“We are doing so at a time when Africa and the world are still facing the effects of multiple crises, in light with crises coupled with significant shortforce in development finance and shrinking physical space that are required in going forward are more concessional resources,” she insisted.
According to Dr Samia, the African countries strongly believe that IDA21 should focus more on providing concessional loans such as 50-year credit loans adding that the facilities will provide more equal space to African countries to address competing development needs.
She advised that in the coming IDA21 circle, policies must be simplified and operational processes must be streamlined.
President, on the other hand, stated that the discussion during the meeting will be underpinned by investment in human capital which drives innovation and growth, arguing that Africa is in transfer of technology and technical know-how. President Samia recalled that in July 2023, Tanzania in collaboration with the World Bank hosted the African Head of States Human Capital Summit that committed to investing in people to improve productivity and building an inclusive and resilient economy.
“We believe that commitments highlighted in Dar es Salaam declaration on human capital are relevant and value IDA’s support,” said Dr Samia. Meanwhile, on Sunday, Finance Minister Dr Mwigulu Nchemba emphasised on the need for the IDA21 to increase funding for Tanzania.
“The IDA has been giving loans under soft conditions, including low interest rates with long term repayment schedule whereby Tanzania has been largely using this opportunity to get funding for improving social services,” Dr Nchemba stated when speaking at the meeting over Africa’s priorities.
He said the window whose interest rates are not more than two per cent has been issuing loans to African countries in a bid to reduce the burden of commercial loans which are costly.
