The Board of Directors of the African Development Bank (AfDB) has unanimously approved a new framework for boosting the effectiveness of the Bank's lending. Adopted at a time when economic growth has yet to be translated to meaningful poverty reduction and jobs for Africa's rapidly expanding population, the roadmap goes beyond the mechanics of aid delivery targeted by the Paris Declaration to commit the Bank to multiple actions designed to accelerate regional member countries' achievement of their development potential.

The product of extensive consultations by the Bank's Quality Assurance and Results Department (ORQR), the new Roadmap for Improving Performance on Aid Effectiveness and Promoting Effective Development lays out a framework rather than a blueprint for sequencing, guiding and coordinating the Bank's work to increase its impact in regional member countries. The roadmap will not only help the AfDB meet its commitments under the 2005 Paris Declaration and the 2009 Accra Agenda for Action, but will multiply the overall development benefits of Bank Group operations.

"Put simply, we see effective aid as a building block in the pursuit of a greater goal: effective development," ORQR Director, Thomas Hurley, emphasized. "By adopting this roadmap, we at the AfDB have declared our commitment to development that reaches beyond the surface development that strengthens and does not displace domestic capacity, and that builds up and does not replace domestic sources of finance," Mr. Hurley said.

The Quality Assurance and Results Department identified the following three areas where the Bank's work is most likely to bring about positive change:

• First, the AfDB will strengthen transparency and accountability for development results by disbursing its financing more predictably, disclosing actual and planned resource flows more promptly and more transparently, and ensuring that borrowers record Bank lending on their budgets.
• Second, the institution will expand its use of country systems. "We can and should do more to build our client countries' capacity," said Mr Hurley. "Many of our regional member countries have made enormous strides in economic and financial governance over past years. We need to press on with reforms."
• And third, the Bank will deepen its engagement in the field by accelerating decentralisation. In so doing, it will give field offices the tools to better tailor programs to countries' priorities and systems and better coordinate AfDB initiatives with the initiatives of other development institutions and civil society.  The roadmap also discusses specific and time-bound actions in five mutually reinforcing areas.

More information on the roadmap can be obtained from Messrs. S. Mizrahi and S. Hachem respectively, Manager and Principal Results Specialist  in the Bank's Quality Assurance and Results Department.