The African Development Bank is set to grant the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) $8.46m to finance peace and capacity building projects. The grant agreement was signed yesterday.

The funds will be used in two of COMESA’s projects; The Trading for Peace (TfP) project and the COMESA, East African Community and Southern African Development Cooperation Tripartite Capacity Building (COMESA-EAC-SADC TCB) programme. The TfP project will receive USD 962,850while USD 7.5 million will go to the COMESA-EAC-SADC TCB programme.

The TfP project, which was launched in 2006 uses trade as a tool to consolidate peace in post conflict countries by building the capacity of small scale cross border traders. The funds received from AfDB will be used to establish new Trade Information Desks (TIDs), enhance existing Desks and build capacity of small scale cross border traders and Cross Border Traders Associations (CBTAs) over the next two years. The TCB programme is aimed at increasing Intra Tripartite trade through provision of technical assistance to the three Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and Tripartite Regional Member Countries.

The AfDB fund is structured around four key pillars: the first is to improvetrade facilitation in Regional Member Countries and Regional Economic Communities; the second is product and marketing development, the third isstrengthening country and regional trade-related institutionsandsystems, whilst the fourth is toincreasethe Bank’s internal capacity.

€8m for infrastructure

In order to enable the programme to address a wider range of issues that face post conflict countries, COMESA, which has received funding from USAID, DFID and GIZ for its Trading for Peace Programme,hasrecentlyreceived an additional €8m from the German Development Bank (KfW). The funds will be usedtoestablish infrastructureprojectsat selected borders over the next five years.

The tripartite capacity building programme will support the Tripartite negotiations process, the development of trade facilitation instruments and industrial cluster action plans in the Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA). The programme will also support the Tripartite negotiations process, the development of trade facilitation instruments and industrial cluster action plans in the Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA).

Among the expected outputs of the programme is the Installation of software for Non-Tariff Measures (NTMs) databases and improved capacity to negotiate market access. The timeframe for implementation is four years.