NEW AGENDA:Building collaborations

The African Development Bank (AfDB) has strengthened its partnership with the United Nations Peace-building Commission in support of post-conflict countries in the continent, its former chair told the General Assembly.Rwanda’s permanent representative to the UN, Amb. Eugène-Richard Gasana, says the partnership will be in resource mobilisation and advocacy, policy dialogue on critical peace-building issues and possible collaboration in the activities of the Peace-building Fund. "By deepening the collaboration between the [Peace-building] Commission and the AfDB, there is now much better clarity on concrete areas where both institutions could jointly work in support of peace-building priorities on the Commission’s agenda,” he said. Gasana was presenting the Commission’s report to the 193-member United Nations General Assembly. The Commission was set up in 2005 to help post-conflict countries avoid slipping back into war and chaos by providing strategic advice and harnessing expertise and financing from around the world to support recovery projects. The Commission currently has six post-conflict countries on its agenda – Burundi, the Central African Republic (CAR), Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Once war-torn Somalia is stabilised, it is expected that the Commission and the African premier development bank will move in and assist in rebuilding its institutions and other capacities.According to the report, a new road map will be developed this year to bring more focus to the Commission’s priorities and results. It will include actions aimed at enabling each country to spell out its expected outcomes, drawing on relevant country-specific indicators and mutual commitments and indicating how achievements would be measured. The report recommends that the Commission further strengthens its relationship with key entities at UN Headquarters.The strengthening of institutional capacities in Africa is rated high on the agenda of the AfDB’s President Dr Donald Kaberuka. His guiding principle has always been enhancing human dignity, empowering people and strengthening their ability to govern themselves."Despite the ongoing progress, the Commission still expects more active reflection of the increasing importance of post-conflict peace-building across the United Nations system, but, more importantly, in the work of the principal organs,” says the report. It calls for "greater synergies” between Peace-building Fund investments and peace-building priorities supported by the Commission that will be pursued through consultations between the countries and the Fund. Besides the peace-building initiative, the AfDB has also been heavily involved in helping African lawyers acquire the capacity to handle complex commercial legal work and litigation.The initiative, which saw the launch of the African Legal Support Facility launched in Kigali in February 2011, is a joint effort between the Bank and the Pan African Lawyers Union.The launch was presided over by President Paul Kagame and the seminars that followed have so far trained over 250 from the continent to build their capacity to handle complex international commercial negotiations and litigation.Lawyers, both in the private and private sector, from Eastern Africa were trained in Kigali in February 2011; from Southern Africa in Cape Town in May 2011; from Northern Africa in Tunis in January 2012; and from Central and West Africa in Yaounde, Cameroon, in March 2012. Besides, the African Legal Support Facility, which a Tunis-based organisation to which states joined by treaty, has assisted many countries fight off cases filed by Vulture Funds (these are companies registered by unscrupulous people which buy distressed debt at high discounted prices and then demand the full amounts from the concerned governments).The Facility has assisted the  Government of Djibouti in funding the services of an international law firm to review and analyse commercial contracts, including port concessions agreements with a private company. The project was successfully completed in December 2011. Projects such as the one in Djibouti are implemented in a way that strengthen legal capacities of lawyers in Africa, and to ensure "know-how and experience sharing.”