The Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), Dr. Workneh Gebeyehu and the Ambassador of Sweden to Ethiopia, the African Union, IGAD and Djibouti H.E. Torbjörn Pettersson launched the Strengthening Coordination and Implementation of IDDRSI (SCII) Project was launched on March 5, 2020 in Djibouti.
The project, worth USD 6.1 million, builds on the on-going support from Sweden and other development partners; and benefits from the experiences and lessons learnt from implementation of the first phase of the IDDRSI Strategy (2013 – 2018). The IGAD Secretariat will use the project to consolidate its work in the promotion and coordination of resilience-building activities in the IGAD region.
‘The fund provided by Sweden for the project we are launching today, which is USD 6.1 million, is targeted to fill key gaps identified during the implementation of Phase I of IDDRSI, and other strategic resilience enhancing undertakings’, Dr Workneh highlighted.
The focus of the activities are on optimising the implementation of IDDRSI; scaling up resilience-enhancing technologies and innovations, especially in cross-border areas; improving the capacity and partnership needed to achieve the objectives of IDDRSI; and improving the capacity to monitor, analyse and evaluate the progress in the process of attaining resilience-enhancement.
This three-year project will be implemented during the period (October 2019 – September 2022) under the leadership and coordination of the Planning, Coordination and Partnerships Division, in consultation with relevant offices in the Member States and with IGAD divisions and specialised institutes.
A consultation meeting with sector experts in Khartoum, Sudan.
During the launching event, the steering committee also held its inaugural meeting, to agree on its terms of reference and discuss the progress report of the first quarter. In their report, the project implementing team explained that they had worked with the Member States to develop terms of reference for the national expert panels for the planning and monitoring of the IDDRSI country programming papers. Consequently, the Member States had proceeded to nominate members from key sectoral ministries by Priority Intervention Areas, as well as M&E and representatives of the Bureaus of Statistics.
Field visit to flagship resilience projects: In Afar and Daasbiyo in Djibouti, farmer groups are supported with water infrastructure and farm inputs.
In addition, draft results indicators had ben developed as a precursor for the support that the project plans to provide to strengthen M&E systems. As part of these efforts, joint monitoring visits to flagship resilience project sites had already been undertaken in all IGAD Member States, except South Sudan and Somalia.
The project is providing support to IGAD to build the technical capacity of the implementation team. Accordingly, the Project Steering Committee was informed that the IGAD Food Security, Nutrition and Resilience Analysis Hub (IFRAH) had recruited the Data Systems and Information Analyst.
In addition to the support provided to the IDDRSI, a grant agreement for an additional grant of 3.6 million US Dollars was signed, in order to support IGAD Member Sates towards the harmonisation of refugee protection and management policies based on a full and inclusive application of the international refugee protection.
The two parties also took the time to conclude a Memorandum of Understanding that aims at improving coordination of multi-sectoral projects and programmes that are consistent with mandates of both IGAD and Sweden.
Fridah Bosire
Fridah works at IGAD as a data clerk supporting the content management of the IGAD Resilience Portal.