As increasingly recognized by Africa’s leaders and partners, the cost of the continent’s geographic, political and economic fragmentation and its separation from international markets is rising, in many ways becoming untenable. Some countries enjoy the windfall gains of historically high oil prices, while many others struggle with power-shortages and rolling blackouts. Most suffer from insufficient scale in production and lack of international competitiveness due to high costs and low reliability of transport, power, and telecoms combined with often prohibitive intra-African barriers on the flow of goods, capital and people.

“By addressing these obstacles, regional integration can pave the way for a more competitive and faster growing Africa,” says Mark Tomlinson, director of the Regional Integration Department in the Bank’s Africa Region. “Regional integration holds a particularly strong promise for Africa’s 15 land-locked countries since their economic potential is inherently linked to the particular interests and conditions of their surrounding countries.”

According to Tomlinson, “regional integration and cooperation also offers possibilities to ensure much improved and more sustainable management of shared natural resources––water and sensitive ecosystems, in particular––and to more effectively address regional commons, such as migratory diseases and climate change”.

While not the first donor to proactively engage in Africa’s regional integration agenda, the World Bank has scaled up efforts significantly over the past five years—first with the launch of International Development Association’s (IDA) regional pilot program in 2003, and then with the establishment of the Regional Integration Department in the Africa Region in 2004.

Today the Regional Integration Department manages a lending portfolio of $2.2 billion (the second largest in the Africa Region) and a considerable program of knowledge and capacity development activities. Regional resources were increased 100 percent in the replenishment of IDA, providing up to a further $2.1 billion for regional investments in Africa over the next three years (some 12-15 percent of total IDA assistance to Africa.)

“Leveraging the effectiveness of regional IDA through cooperation and partnerships is the name of the game,” according to the Department’s Lead Operations Officer Jacob Kolster. “Once you ensure ownership at the country level, regional projects can then be approached like a joint venture between countries. The shared vested interest builds cooperation toward a common goal, such as cross-border power trade.”

Projects such as the Regional Communications Infrastructure Project (RCIP) and East Africa Submarine System (EASSy) aiming to bring high speed broadband internet access to Eastern Africa and the West Africa Power Pool Project, connecting national power grids across West Africa to dramatically reduce costs and increase supply and reliability of electricity, serve as prime examples of how regional programs stand to benefit people across borders.

With the aim to maximize the leverage and impact of the increasing regional assistance to be provided under the 15 th IDA replenishment, the regional integration assistance strategy marks the first comprehensive strategic framework to guide the Bank’s regional engagements in Africa.

The strategy focuses Bank engagement around three key pillars of support and one cross cutting theme: (i) development of regional infrastructure to create economies of scale and connect landlocked countries to regional and global trade routes, (ii) institutional cooperation and economic integration with a particular focus on regional policy harmonization, reduction of tariff and non-tariff barriers, regional business environments and development of regional financial markets, and (iii) coordinated investments in support of regional public goods by focusing on shared water resources, climate change, emergency response, agricultural productivity, cross-border transmission of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, and rationalization of research and tertiary education.

Regional priorities will need to be enshrined in national development plans as this is where implementation largely takes place. To facilitate this process, Bank assistance will target the strengthening of Africa’s key regional economic communities and technical bodies to lead the integration agenda among member countries and national agencies responsible for regional integration.

The new strategy was developed through an extensive stakeholder consultation process that brought together the African Union, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), Regional Economic Communities, academia, bilateral donors, civil society organizations, national governments and development partners. Stakeholders will continue to be involved in implementation, to provide feedback on perceived effectiveness and needed course adjustments in light of stakeholder experiences.

The immediate focus of the strategic framework is the IDA Regional Program and its associated lending and non-lending activities. But the broader aim is to enlarge the scope and reach of the strategic framework to ensure a more systematic reflection of regional priorities in the Bank’s country assistance strategies and programs.

The strategy also aims to strengthen synergies among IDA, IBRD, IFC, and MIGA by enhancing collaboration and coordination. Implementation of the new strategy will be framed within four sub-regional plans of implementation (West, Central, East and Southern Africa.) These plans will be developed jointly among the neighborhood of country teams concerned, the regional team and IFC and MIGA. The first implementation plan – for West Africa – is now under development. Progress with the new strategy will be reported to the Board, and to IDA Deputies as part of the mid-term review of IDA 15.


From web.worldbank.org