WARP
The Development Challenge: Conflict continues to plague this sub-region, undermining investments in its development and further impoverishing the majority of its people. The failure to resolve the crisis in Cote d'Ivoire has disrupted the pattern of intra-regional trade and displaced its people, both within Cote d'Ivoire and neighboring countries. The monumental task of rebuilding Sierra Leone is made all the more difficult by the influx of refugees from the conflict in Liberia while the potential for upheaval in Guinea threatens the stability and prospects for development of all its neighbors.
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Development indicators for the region remain abysmal with more than half of West African countries falling within the bottom 25 countries on the United Nations Human Development Index for 2003. Cape Verde aside, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita for 2001 ranged from a low of $470 for Sierra Leone to a high of $2,250 for Ghana. The proportion of the population living on a dollar or less a day when measured between 1990 and 2001 ranged from 12% in Cote d'Ivoire to 73% in Mali. Forty per cent of countries experienced negative GDP growth during the same period. It is not surprising that only four countries - Cape Verde, Ghana, The Gambia, and Guinea - are on track with respect to half or more of their Millennium Development Goals. Although agriculture is viewed as the engine that will drive West Africa's economic growth and development, it too is faced with several biophysical constraints, including low soil fertility and low rainfall. In all, only 4% of West Africa's land area has both high soil fertility and sufficient rainfall for an adequate number of growing days. Ironically, these dismal development indicators for West Africa make the region all the more strategically important to the United States. Desperate and widespread poverty combines with porous borders and lax and corrupt bureaucracies to create a lucrative source of funds from illegal trade in the region's high-value natural resource wealth - diamonds, timber, and uranium - that directly or indirectly support terrorist groups.
The USAID Program: The West Africa Regional Program (WARP) deals with those West African development challenges that are most effectively addressed at a regional level. The WARP program works in partnership with USAID bilateral missions, U.S. Embassies, and leading regional intergovernmental organizations such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), and the Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS). The program serves the 18 nations of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Chad, Cote D'Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo.
The data sheets that follow this summary cover the four objectives for which USAID plans to use FY 2004 and FY 2005 funds. These objectives are concerned with: 1) fostering regional economic integration; 2) increasing the adoption of sustainable policies for and approaches to reproductive health, sexually transmitted disease, HIV/AIDS, and child survival; 3) strengthening food security and environmental policies and programs; and 4) supporting the establishment of regional conflict prevention mechanisms. Continued funding from the Presidential Initiative for Trade for African Development and Enterprise (TRADE) will be used to expand trade between the region and the United States, particularly under the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act and to bring the region further into compliance with World Trade Organization regulations. Further funding from the Initiative to End Hunger in Africa (IEHA) will be used to start a program of activities to spread the benefits of biotechnology to farmers and consumers alike, foster the transfer of successful agricultural technologies to producers in the region and support the establishment of a viable sub-regional market information system. Core agriculture and environmental funds will help maintain vital regional food security systems. HIV/AIDS funds will be used to launch an innovative, region-wide program to contain the epidemic with a focus on advocacy and transfer of proven best practices. Child Survival and Heath funds will support reproductive health and child survival activities that address the seemingly intractable issues of high fertility and maternal and child mortality in the region. Anti-corruption Initiative funds will be used to develop targeted activities to address the scourge of government corruption.
Other Program Elements: USAID's West Africa Regional Program will continue to collaborate with all USAID bilateral missions in the region and with relevant U.S. Government agencies. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and USAID will support each other's work in non-presence countries within the context of the new regional health project and President Bush's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. We will also work hand-in hand with agencies that are involved in agriculture and trade including the Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service division and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
Other Donors: Donor collaboration continues to improve significantly, especially in the context of assistance to the program's chief partner, ECOWAS. A united donor front has encouraged ECOWAS to undertake results-oriented strategic planning that sets clear goals and objectives, specific targets, and realistic budgets. Likewise, donors are working well together in the context of their support to CILSS, the organization that has always been the major player in food security issues, and that now has an increasingly important voice in regional agricultural and poverty reduction matters. Here too, USAID takes a lead role in addressing concerns about CILSS' sustainability. Increasingly donors are showing an interest in ECOWAS' conflict prevention role and USAID is working to coordinate donor inputs in this promising area. More importantly, the principal regional intergovernmental organizations are now beginning to work collaboratively in key areas such as energy, food security, agriculture policy development, and trade. This is a welcome trend.
The World Bank (WB), European Union (EU), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) through the Global Environment Facility and to a lesser extent, the Department for International Development (DFID), fund programs addressing environmental and biodiversity issues by taking a transboundary approach. Regional programs in agriculture are funded by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency, UNDP, the German Development Agency, and DFID, which is also promoting genetically engineered nematode-resistant rice varieties. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) supports the fight against HIV/AIDS in West Africa and general epidemiological surveillance while the WB is funding the new five-country Abidjan-Lagos Transport Corridor HIV/AIDS project, modeled on USAID's HIV/AIDS transport corridor project. The German government gave funds for ECOWAS initiatives to help ensure regional peace and security, and the Canada Fund for Africa supports a West Africa Peace and Security Initiative. The WB is involved in the West African Gas Pipeline Project and a regional payment systems project, both of which also receive significant USAID support, and a West Africa capital markets project.
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