The country’s 2018-2022 Country Strategy Paper (CSP) and 2022 portfolio performance review, both of which are finished, are currently being reviewed by the Niger government, the African Development Bank, and a number of other stakeholders.
The parties have also begun talking about the new country programming for the following five years (2023-2027).
The evaluation, which started on June 21 in Niamey and will go until July 7, involves 60 top officials from government agencies, specialists from the African Development Bank Group, and members of the private sector and civil society.
Through two pillars—promoting the economy’s competitiveness to create jobs and expanding agriculture to ensure sustainable and inclusive growth—the 2018-2022 CSP aimed to stimulate the attainment of Niger’s 2017–2021 Economic and Social Development Plan.
The Secretary General of the Niger Ministry of Planning, Saadou Bakoye, and John Andrianarisata, the African Development Bank’s country manager in Niger, praised the two countries’ excellent collaboration during the opening ceremony.
Andrianarisata congratulated “the chance to evaluate, in collaboration with the government and other stakeholders, how the Niger Country Strategy Paper has helped to attaining the goals of the government’s 2017–2021 Economic and Social Development Plan.
He said that the gathering will allow attendees to “examine in-depth the Bank’s portfolio’s performance in Niger in 2022″ and hold the appropriate stakeholder engagements regarding the likelihood of the Bank making strategic interventions under the 2023–2027 Country Strategy Paper”.
Despite a challenging environment and a $161 million delay in the commencement of the two largest infrastructure projects, the country manager said the review’s conclusions were encouraging.
The two projects comprise the opening of the Tamaske-Tahoua and Tamaske-Marraraba Road Development Project as well as the Hamdara-Wacha-Dungass Cross-Border Production Areas.
In the agriculture, transportation, and governance sectors, he said the Bank Group had approved ten operations totaling $369 million.
He said that the portfolio’s performance had been rated as satisfactory with a score of 3.14 on a scale of 1 to 4.
The 2023–2027 Country Strategy Paper will be precisely in line with the strategic tenets of the 2022–2026 Economic and Social Development Programme issued by the [Niger] government, according to Secretary General Bakoye, who stated that the mission’s goals would be entirely met.
In Niger, the African Development Bank Group’s portfolio shows that transportation (39 percent) predominates, followed by rural development (26 percent), energy (24 percent), telecommunications (7 percent), governance (2 percent), and social development (25 percent) (2 percent ).
The Group’s active portfolio was worth $693 million as of May 31, 2022.