The African Risk Capacity (ARC) has added a crucial partner to its portfolio by formally teaming up with the African Development Bank (AfDB) to strengthen mechanisms to manage weather-related risk on the continent.
This partnership will formalize a technical collaboration to enhance risk management infrastructure and policy across Africa; it will also support African countries in building resilience against climate shocks and in taking ownership of their disaster response.
In concrete terms, the AfDB and ARC Agency will work together to develop their Member states’ capacity in understanding the value of risk transfer tools.
The partnership is intended to result in ARC Member countries integrating risk management into their policy and development objectives, with a particular focus on recurrent disasters such as drought, floods and tropical cyclones as well as on improved resilience and speedier recovery after disasters.
ARC and AfDB signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on the margins of ARC’s Fifth Conference of Parties (CoP5) in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, on March 7, 2017.
The signing of the MOU is subsequent to the Letter of Intent (LOI), which was signed between the two institutions in May 2016 during the AfDB’s Annual Meetings in Lusaka. The MOU formalizes a technical partnership to collaborate on the enhancement of the risk management infrastructure and policy regime across Africa.
The aim of this partnership will be for the institutions to collaborate: in the development of capacity and services; providing capacity building to individual countries; to embed risk management in planning and to deepen the understanding of the value of risk transfer tools. This collaboration is in line with the support that the Bank should provide to Regional Member Countries (RMCs) pursuant to its Charter as well as its role in assisting RMCs to adapt to the growing hazards from climate change.
Signing the MOU on the behalf of the African Development Bank, the Senior Vice-President, Frannie Léautier, stated: “In the context of this MOU, ARC and AfDB will partner to support Member States in key areas, which will lay the foundations for a robust approach at the national-level around disaster risk financing.”
Mohamed Béavogui, United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and the Director-General of ARC, views the MOU with that AfDB as a key milestone, stating: “This partnership with AfDB will complement ARC as we will jointly train and prepare countries to better manage weather-related risk and mainstream insurance into their disaster management plans.”