World Bank invests $11.5bn to assist Africa recover from crisis

The World Bank, last week, said it has committed a record $11.5 billion so far in 2010 fiscal year toward helping Africa region recover rapidly from the impact of the global financial crisis. The World Bank Group in a release on Thursday hinted it supported 113 projects, with $4.3 billion in commitments from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which provides financing, risk management products, and other financial services to countries, and $7.2 billion in commitments from the International Development Association, which provides interest-free loans and grants to the world’s poorest countries.The major beneficiaries of the investment include education, health, nutrition, population,and Infrastructure. Speaking at an event in Washington, USA, World Bank Africa’s Vice President, Obiageli Katryn Ezekwesili said: “This year saw an unprecedented level of lending to shore economies back to the path of recovery. The constant focus on results and relevant and timely knowledge products made a difference for the people of Africa”“Today, as Africa is one of the first continents to emerge from the crisis and has the prospect of returning before most other regions to the solid growth pattern it had experienced before the crisis, I am glad that our institution was there to help, and was part of their solution.” The World Bank Group committed more than $72 billion in fiscal year 2010, an unprecedented level of Bank Group assistance for developing countries as the world faces a fragile and uneven recovery. It noted that the Bank Group supported an estimated 875 projects to promote economic growth, overcome poverty, and promote private enterprise, with record commitments in education, health, nutrition, population, and infrastructure providing much-needed investments in crisis-hit economies. Nigerian companies and institutions have benefited in several ways from the World Bank largesse in the form of credit facilities and capacity building assistance in such sector as education, population and infrastructure and health among others. Only recently, the International Finance Corporation, IFC, the private arm of the World Bank Group, granted $8.5million (N1.3billion to Tantalizers Plc to enable the catering outfit expand its operations within the country.