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Editorial - AFD and regional cooperation

The 14 February 2002 Interministerial Committee for International Cooperation and Development entrusted Agence française de Développement with a mandate to support France’s Overseas Local Authorities’ initiatives in terms of regional cooperation.
 
AFD activities in terms of regional cooperation have three objectives: to enhance the integration of France’s Overseas Departments and Local Authorities into their immediate environment, to help neighbouring countries benefit from competences and resources available in France’s overseas geographies and finally to intervene on issues relative to the sub-regions (e.g. environmental protection, epidemiological surveillance, migration issues).
 
AFD has developed a number of initiatives specifically focusing on promoting projects in the environment, heavy infrastructure (energy in particular), microfinance and health sectors and has consequently built up innovative institutional partnerships. In the Coral Reef Initiative for the South Pacific (CRISP) it has, for instance, entered into agreements with actors from various sectors (research centers, NGOs, UN…). It also seeks to build synergies with the cooperation actions engaged upon by France’s Overseas Local Authorities. This was the aim of the partnership agreement AFD signed with Guadeloupe Region in 2006 for joint actions in the health and microfinance sectors in Haiti.
 
Such actions have been developed in the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. AFD supports initiatives which are based on common guidelines and contribute to building relations between actors who are not necessarily used to working together. The initiatives also aim to strengthen the capacities of existing regional organizations in charge of the relevant sectors and problematics.
 
This edition aims to share some of these experiences after a few years of interventions.
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Odile Lapierre
Department Director
The Americas, Indian Ocean, Pacific

Contents

Dominica and Saint Lucia eligible for the natural hazard insurance facility in its first year

Cooperation between IOC States to improve epidemiological surveillance

Petites Antilles: regional cooperation in favour of training

French Guiana – Building synergies between Guyanese actors for regional cooperation in Surinam

The geographical location of French Guiana means France is the only European country sharing borders with two South countries, one ACP[1] (Surinam) and the other emerging (Brazil). This creates a strategic issue in terms of regional cooperation, not only for French Guiana, but for France and even the European Union. Against this backdrop, the AFD Cayenne agency, aware of its specific role as both a stakeholder in Guyanese cooperation and a facilitator for exchanges between its actors, has organized meetings gathering the main Guyanese entities operating in the sector (Regional Council, Departmental Council, Prefecture, CNES, Chamber of Commerce and Industry, foreign trade advisor).
 
AFD signed an establishment agreement with Surinam in 2000 and has gradually become an important partner via the Cayenne agency. In order to improve its effectiveness it has also established closer ties with the main donors and regularly attends monthly meetings organized by the latter. With the same aim of building synergies and complementary actions, the Cayenne agency received donors for the first time on 6 and 7 December 2007 (European Commission, Inter-American Development Bank, UNDP, Dutch Cooperation).
 
The meetings organized with local partners provided the opportunity to better apprehend the intervention strategies and activities of all stakeholders and brought out the three following common axes:
 
  • Financing for the rehabilitation of the road between Albina – a town bordering French Guiana – and Paramaribo – Surinam’s capital
  • A comparative study of both economies initiated within the framework of the CEROM[2] project (analysis of the main sectoral axes presenting an interest in terms of an inter-regional approach)
  • Implementation of complementarities with the Operational Program for Cross-border Cooperation (€12.8M) managed by Guyane Region.
All partners have expressed their will to repeat this type of initiative which can be a catalyst for interesting synergies. Several sizeable projects meeting this objective currently under consideration by the Cayenne agency for 2008-2010 could mobilize other partners. Such operations include:
  1. the development of Albina Resort, bordering French Guiana, via the implementation of economic, urban, social and ecological mechanisms;
  2. health sector support in the Maroni border area; AFD is processing a new health sector project which aims firstly to strengthen bilateral cooperation between Surinam and French Guiana (in particular in the hospital sector) and secondly to rehabilitate infrastructure and equipment (Albina hospital, health centers).
The process to create synergies between actors has now been launched and will be a specific focus for AFD, since it is only through concerted action by all local stakeholders that French Guiana will successfully integrate its environment. This is also the message expressed by the French and Brazilian Presidents when they met at Saint Georges de l’Oyapock in February 2008.
 
 
[2] The CEROM initiative is a cooperation set up by AFD, INSEE and IEDOM in 2003 to establish rapid economic accounts for Overseas France, model recent changes in the economy using synthetic conjunctural indicators and regularly provide macroeconomic publications.

Dominica and Saint Lucia eligible for the natural hazard insurance facility in its first year

A powerful hurricane hits a Caribbean State every two and a half years on average causing devastating hurricane damage. In 2004 Hurricane Ivan caused USD800M of damage in Grenada, i.e. twice the amount of the country’s GDP. Such catastrophic damage led Caricom (the Caribbean Community) to request the World Bank to set up a completely innovative insurance mechanism (Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility - CCRIF).

 

The project enables 18 subscribing Caricom States (Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados, Bahamas, Belize, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman, Dominica, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, Montserrat, St. Lucia, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Turks & Caicos, Trinidad and Tobago) to pool natural hazard risk (cyclones and earthquakes) and have access to non-earmarked immediate budget support in the event of a natural hazard to compensate for the temporary loss of budget resources and to meet emergency expenditures.

 

 
The Insurance Facility has the following features:
  1. It is a specialized risk aggregating intermediary which sells annual premiums to participating countries (between USD200 000 and USD4M to cover risk between USD20M and USD50M). It retains part of the risk and is reinsured on the markets.
  2. The tool uses parametric insurance (creation of a cyclonic risk index and a seismic risk index for each country) which lowers insurance costs, makes indemnity payments more transparent and increases equity between participants.
  3. It is a sustainable mechanism, both financially and in terms of governance.
  4. It is based on regional ownership in terms of fund management and registration.
Donors have committed up to USD36M, including EUR5.0M for AFD, to make up part of the reserve fund.
 
AFD paid its contribution in mid-December 2007.
 
Following the 29.11.07 earthquake off the coast of Martinique, two Caricom members, Dominica and Saint Lucia, became the first States to be eligible for the insurance facility since it had been set up in June 2007. They received their first indemnities in December 2007.

This process could be repeated in other geographical areas which face similar challenges (identification is currently underway for the Dominican Republic and the Central American States, Indian Ocean, Pacific…) or for other types of risk (tropical rains caused by cyclones, droughts…). AFD is pursuing its reflection on the identification of new areas for this innovative approach (agricultural risks, food security…).

Cooperation between IOC States to improve epidemiological surveillance

Awareness of renewed epidemiological risk since 2002 with SARS and avian flu led the WHO to adopt a new International Health Regulation (IHR), the IHR 2005, which came into force in June 2007. IHR (2005) heralds a major change in global epidemiological surveillance: (i) it widens the scope of events to be declared to the notion of “public health emergency on an international scale”, (ii) it provides a restrictive legal framework for States which must acquire capacities for surveillance and actions within a five-year period and (iii) it strengthens the role of the WHO in country supervision and support.
 
The unprecedented scale of the 2006 chikungunya epidemic showed the interdependence and major vulnerability of countries facing epidemiological risk, which is worsened by their insular context, their socio-economic and sanitary differences, and economic issues which lead to competition between States rather than cooperation. Chikungunya has remained endemic in the region for the past two years and experts fear the outbreak of an epidemic of dengue fever, while animal health is deteriorating with, in particular, deadly epizootic outbreaks in the Comoros and Mauritius (swine fever). Recent flooding in Kenya and Tanzania has led to fears of outbreaks of epidemics in these countries, precursors of epidemics in the Indian Ocean zone, as was the case with chikungunya.
 
The Indian Ocean region is at the crossroads between Asia and Africa and is therefore particularly exposed to epidemic episodes. At the end of 2006 the Member States of the Indian Ocean Commission (Comoros, France-Reunion, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles) decided to process a regional epidemiological surveillance project. The main objective of the ESIN-IOC project (Epidemiological Surveillance and Investigation Network for Member States of the Indian Ocean Commission), financed by the Agence Française de Développement up to 6 million euros, is to ensure IOC Member States meet their obligations in terms of the WHO. The project aims to go beyond the regional competitive context, build cooperation in this sector and thus stem potential serious economic repercussions which could occur due to poorly managed epidemic crises.
 
It will therefore support States in their efforts to strengthen national capacities in terms of epidemiological surveillance, diagnosis and response. The ESIN-IOC project will be active on two levels with:
  • a regional component to set up an epidemiological network which will ensure the dissemination of information and the coordination of responses. The network will be coordinated by the IOC where a technical unit will be set up.
  • a national component to strengthen the technical capacities of countries (laboratories, training…) in terms of surveillance and responses to epidemic diseases.
The project will be on a participative basis in terms of both processing and steering and will foster two fundamental principles in combating epidemics on a regional scale: State ownership of the project and solidarity between States.

Petites Antilles: regional cooperation in favour of training

On 16 October 2007 a USD4 million loan agreement to finance student loans was signed with the Bank Of Saint Lucia in the presence of the French Embassy to the Eastern Caribbean States based in Saint Lucia.

 

These loans, within the framework of AFD’s regional cooperation with Eastern Caribbean States, will mainly be available to young people undertaking vocational or educational training in one of France’s three Departments in the Americas.

The agreement is a first step towards a regional mechanism and should be extended to the whole zone which is made up of small insular States where local training supply is lacking, access to credit is limited and French training is recognized.

 

In addition to benefiting from much cheaper credit, young borrowers will be supported in improving their French via support form the Alliance Française before their departure, followed by intensive lessons (Regional Cooperation Fund financing) ahead of their university cursus.

Contacts

vasseurm@afd.fr - 00 33 1 53 44 33 21
Agence Française de Développement
5, rue Roland Barthes
75012 - Paris
France

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