Africa is experiencing an economic boom,
and the African Development Bank (AfDB) is an important institution financing
development on the continent. It is one of the leading institutions in the
recently launched Program for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA),
which was created to increase intra-regional trade in Africa. The AfDB Group
(consisting of the AfDB and the African Development Fund) also provides
hundreds of millions of dollars of official development assistance (ODA) to
Sub-Saharan African countries each year. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in 2012 the AfDB disbursed USD
1.7 billion in ODA, or approximately 10% of multilateral ODA disbursed that
year (link to statistics, Table 29).
Like the World Bank and all other
multilateral development banks, the AfDB has a dispute resolution mechanism to
handle disputes involving communities affected by AfDB financed projects. This
mechanisms, known as the Independent Review Mechanism (IRM) was established in
2004, and undergoes periodic reviews by the AfDB Boards of Directors. In 2014,
the AfDB began its second review of the IRM. As part of the process, the AfDB
commissioned a report by a consultant to review the performance of the IRM. It
then invited comments from civil society on that report between 1 July 2014 to
30 August, 2014.
