The African Development Bank Group has finalized arrangements with the Canadian 'International Development Research Centre IDRC' (www.idrc.ca/ccaa) through its Climate Change Adaptation Program in Africa. In this regard, the AfDB Group is holding a training workshop for all operations task managers.

The aim of this training workshop is to enable task managers from the AfDB sectoral and infrastructure complexes gain a better understanding of climate variability and change as well as their implications for the Bank's investment portfolio in agriculture and natural resources, health, water, infrastructure, among others. The workshop will also help participants analyze the associated risks of climate variability and change and how they threaten the AfDB's overall mission of achieving sustainable poverty alleviation and economic development in the institution's regional member countries. Participants will assess and evaluate new knowledge and benefits of each session.

Some of the strategic objectives of this capacity development workshop include:

Enabling ADB staff to become conversant with key issues in climate risk management concepts including coping with current climate variability and adaptation to future climate changes, and evaluate the complexities and depth of climate variability/change, and the nature of the risks posed to people, governments, infrastructures ,ecosystems, investments, etc;

Building capacity to appreciate, analyze, assess and integrate climate risk issues including climate adaptation into long-term strategic development planning;

Enabling Bank staff improve on the knowledge and their expertise on existing and emerging climate change adaptation issues and the practical implications for policy decisions at various levels of operation;

Mainstreaming Climate change considerations in the Bank's operations work;

Assessing the needs and developing way-forward strategies for integration of climate risks in the development.

At the end of this training, the programme is expected to enhance the capacity of task managers on risks posed by climate variability and change and how to mainstream issues and concerns relating to climate variability and change into the institution's on-going and future portfolio through appropriate climate change adaptation strategies.