AfDB Releases New Tool To Assess Resilience, Fragility In Countries

The African Development Bank (AfDB) has announced that it has created and refined a new tool to diagnose fragility in countries, taking into account their capacities and pressures they may be under.

Called the Country Resilience and Fragility Assessment (CRFA), the bank said the tool offers a completely new method of assessing resilience and fragility using seven key criteria: political inclusiveness, safety and security, justice, the economy, social cohesion, the regional contagion effect, and climate change.

“The creation of the CRFA represents a significant advance in the assessment of fragility, which is a reality that it is not always easy to pin down or discern. By introducing, for the first time, the concepts of ‘capacities’ and ‘pressures’, this new tool brings much more rigour and effectiveness to the assessment of resilience and fragility, especially since it takes greater account of the national context,” explained Sibry Tapsoba, Director of the Transition States Coordination Office (RDTS) .

Before its approval by the Bank Board on 11 September, the CRFA, was subjected to a range of checks for reliability and effectiveness, conducted under the supervision of the Transition States Coordination Office, with support from the bank’s statistics and resource mobilization departments.

The AfDB is also optimistic that the new tool should also be useful for advocacy and communication and improving and strengthening dialogue between the bank and its regional members.

“What we have here is an assessment tool of unquestionable rigour. It is easy to use, it is reliable and it is accessible to all. It brings an undeniable added value to existing techniques for the assessment of resilience and fragility,” said Riadh Ben Messaoud, from the Bank’s Resource Mobilization department.