April 3, 2012

Vice-President Namadi Sambo on Monday said the Islamic Development Bank had earmarked $2bn (about N310bn) to support the implementation of the President Goodluck Jonathan administration’s transformation agenda.

The support will cover the period of 2012 to 2014.

Sambo disclosed this in a keynote address entitled, “African development experience: What successful experiences to replicate and scale up,” which he delivered during a meeting of the African Governors’ Forum on Special Programme for the Development of Africa in Khartoum, Sudan.

The SPDA is an initiative of the IDB for the acceleration of development objectives in African member countries.

The vice-president thanked the IDB President, Dr. Ahmad Ali, for the support, which he said, would go a long way in assisting the Jonathan administration realise the objectives of the transformation agenda.

He said the agenda rested on five pillars of accelerated and sustained economic growth; improvement and modernisation of infrastructure; strengthening of human capital stock and enhancement of access to social services; improved governance and increased competitiveness; reinforcement of social cohesion and main-streaming of cross cutting issues.

Sambo said experience had shown that significant private sector participation and financial support from development partners were critical to achieving the agenda.

The vice-president observed that poverty eradication still remained a big issue for African countries.

He said, “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, 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, United State of America and some European Union member countries.”

Source: Punch