Verdensbanken ved, at den nye og meget fattige afrikanske nations fødsel bliver svær og forbereder sig derefter
The World Bank unveiled Tuesday a plan to create a 75 million US dollar (375 mio. DKR) trust fund for strife-torn southern Sudan, due to become an independent country on July 9th.
The Bank’s executive board “recommended that a 75 million trust fund be established to help provide health care, infrastructure, and employment for the people of South Sudan”, the development lender said in a statement.
The money will be made available to South Sudan in the first few months after independence.
South Sudan has applied for membership to the World Bank, which is working closely with the International Monetary Fund to ensure that the joint processes can be completed as quickly as possible.
The new “South Sudan Transition Trust Fund” (SSTTF) underscores the bank’s quest to provide early assistance to South Sudan given the urgency of challenges faced by the nascent state.
The SSTTF will be used to rapidly increase the coverage of child immunization, provision of vitamin A, de-worming, and other selected services for rural mothers and children. It will also increase rural livelihoods opportunities, and improve rural access by supporting a project to provide 1.400 km of feeder roads in areas with high agricultural potential.
In addition, the trust fund will help create jobs through grants to 200 entrepreneurs, increasing outreach to women entrepreneurs, and building up a micro-finance client base of 30.000 individuals. Through such projects, the trust fund aims to deliver timely and critical interventions that will help improve the lives of poor people in quicker and practical ways, the bank states.
The World Bank further pointed out that the fund builds on the framework of the 2011 World Development Report on Conflict, Security and Development, which calls for more responsiveness to the needs and opportunities of fragile and conflict-affected situations such as South Sudan.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
