Finishing touches on preparations for the 3rd edition of the Africa Resilience Forum (ARF), an initiative of the African Development Bank (ADB), have been made, with over 300 participants expected to converge in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, from 4-6 March, 2019.
Slated for the headquarters of the ADB, the discourse will focus on the theme, “Fragility, Migration and Resilience,” to examine ongoing challenges posed by migration – security, youth unemployment, gender issues, and the effects of climate change. It comes against the backdrop of the large number of people who are forced to migrate from their places of residence.
Participation will span senior members of governments, representatives of international organizations, leading members of civil society, academics and businesspersons.
ARF was conceived to kick off an Africa region process of bringing together key partners to reflect on policies and approaches in support of African countries on issues of conflict prevention, peace and state building initiatives at regional and country-level.
This year’s forum, organized in partnership with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), will be a unique platform for participants from different backgrounds to share their experiences. It will also offer a space to consider the considerable opportunities offered by migration as a catalyst for development and a source of sharing of social values between the countries of origin, transit and destination.
A plenary specifically dedicated to “innovative solutions in the field of migration,” including financial solutions, will be used to highlight how poverty and lack of employment prospects are becoming powerful drivers of migration and instability.
Migration, security and development will be at the heart of discussions at another plenary session during which participants will discuss smuggling of migrants and the impact of tightened border controls with the objective of laying prevailing myths about migration to rest.
Migration within the African continent will be discussed during a parallel session entitled “Intra-African Migration: Challenges and Policies,” while yet another workshop will focus on “Climate Change, Migration and Building Resilience.”
The debates held during this edition of the Resilience Forum will benefit from input from the new Country Resilience and Fragility Assessment (CRFA) tool, which seeks to determine the internal and external pressures on countries and their capacity to address this issue.
Developed in 2018 by the African Development Bank, the CRFA introduces, for the first time in the history of fragility and resilience evaluation tools, the criteria of “effects of regional contagion” and “climate change.”
Six plenary sessions and nine parallel workshops will offer participants the chance to identify the best initiatives to address fragility and to build resilience through appropriate responses to the challenges of migration.
