Benin Receives US$50 million for Community Driven Development Project

Washington, October 7, 2004 – The World Bank Board of Executive Directors today approved an International Development Association (IDA) credit* of US$37.7 million and a grant of US$12.3 million to support the community-driven development (CDD) project in the Republic of Benin.

The National Community Driven Development Support Project  will promote the use of the CDD approach by relevant  ministries, decentralized local governments and local communities to improve access of the poorest communities to basic social and financial services.  Doing so will help operationalize recent steps toward decentralization in Benin and will prepare  ministries and decentralized local governments to apply the CDD approach to activities receiving programmatic support.  The activities supported will also contribute towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals in areas such as education, health, water and sanitation, and gender equity.

The project will build the capacity of local governments to work in partnership with communities  to plan and implement their local development plans, and to learn that empowering their communities is mutually beneficial.  Local communities will have the opportunity to use resources to improve their living conditions, and to build their capacity to do so with the support of local councils and relevant  ministries. 

“By promoting the community driven development approach, the project will help line ministries delegate responsibilities to local governments which will, in turn, delegate some of these responsibilities to communities,” said Serge Theunynck, the World Bank Task Team Leader for the project.  “In this way, progress towards implementing decentralization and promoting greater participatory at the local level  will be achieved.”  

The first component of the project will strengthen the institutional capacity of the public sector at the central and local levels to develop and implement the CDD strategy, policy, and programs.  It will also assist the Government develop the legal and administrative framework to implement a national CDD policy, and assist relevant  ministries realign their roles within the framework of both decentralization and CDD.  It will also build the capacity of participating local governments to integrate a CDD approach into their planning and implementation mechanisms.  This will include empowering communities to prepare, implement and monitor sub-projects within the commune development plan.  To do so, grassroots management training on key skills such as village governance, participatory poverty and needs assessment, and community-based financial and procurement management will be provided.

The second component will improve access of the poor to basic services and infrastructure.  It will provide grants to the local councils and communities  to implement projects at both the commune and villages levels. These projects will address priorities determined by the communities and local councils themselves.

The third component will improve access of the poor to financial services for income-generating activities.  This will be done by providing competitive grants to existing microfinance institutions to enable them to extend their programs  to the poorest communities in Benin.  It will also provide grants to poor communities to finance advisory services of their choice to improve their income generating activities with the possibility to be financed by microfinance institutions.

Benin’s poverty reduction strategy paper acknowledges that sustainable poverty reduction requires economic growth and argues in favor of increased access to basic services and provision of  economic opportunities for the poor.  It also requires good governance to ensure transparency and a fair distribution of the benefits of this growth.

The National Community Driven Development Support project will be implemented by the Ministry of Planning and Development and will support decentralization by developing partnerships between relevant  ministries, local governments and communities.  This will enable local government and communities to shape their future by delivering resources directly to them to be used to improve living standards of their poorest citizens.

For more information on the World Bank’s work in sub-Saharan Africa visit:  http://www.worldbank.org/afr

For more information on the World Bank’s work in the Republic of Benin visit:

www.worldbank.org/afr/bj

For more information about this project visit:

http://web.worldbank.org/external/projects/main?pagePK=104231&piPK=73230&theSitePK=40941&menuPK=228424&Projectid=P081484