Spotlight: Better development planning for Africa's fragile states

ISS is collaborating with the African Development Bank (AfDB) to help make innovative recommendations.

Published on 17 September 2013 in Impact

ISS is collaborating with the African Development Bank (AfDB) to help make innovative recommendations about how the development community, including the AfDB itself, can work more effectively in African countries affected by conflict.

ISS executive director, Jakkie Cilliers, was among the speakers at the launch of the High Level Panel for Fragile States in Monrovia, Liberia on 2 September. The launch was lead by Donald Kaberuka, president of the AfDB and Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf who chairs the Panel. Established by Kaberuka to advise the AfDB on how to build peace and set a course for prosperity in Africa’s vulnerable states, the Panel comprises eight eminent members with extensive expertise in state fragility and its impact on development.

Cilliers’ briefing to the Panel drew on the recent ISS paper he co-authored with colleague Julia Schunemann on the future of intrastate conflict in Africa. The paper has contributed to new debate within prominent global and regional organisations and positions ISS as a leading organisation for credible and policy relevant analysis of conflict trends.

Assessing long-term fragility in Africa with a focus on 25 of the ‘more fragile’ countries, Cilliers and co-author, Professor Tim Sisk, used the International Futures forecasting model to make ten recommendations to the Panel. These ranged from setting up a long-term facility to support 12 ‘more fragile’ countries over the next 20 years, to supporting cash grants to address deep-seated poverty, and embracing innovation in data collection and analysis. The ISS contribution in Monrovia, the preparation of which was funded partly by the AfDB, will help shape the Panel’s final report and the AfDB’s approach to more effective development in vulnerable states.

For more information contact:

Jakkie Cilliers, Executive Director, ISS Pretoria: [email protected]

Related documents and links

Presentation on ‘Assessing long-term fragility in Africa’ by Jakkie Cilliers and Tim Sisk at the launch of the High Level Panel for Fragile States.