An innovative $150 million dollar grant program aimed at supporting Sustainable Land Management (SLM) in Africa was approved by the Council of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) at a meeting in Washington on 14 June 2007.

Called the Strategic Investment Program for SLM in Sub Saharan Africa, the SIP has been developed over the course of the last two years through an extensive consultation process led by NEPAD, and brings together under one umbrella six agencies including the World Bank.

The SIP forms a key part of the new NEPAD-TerrAfrica Initiative - a partnership specifically developed to provide a mechanism through which the operational objectives of NEPAD’s Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) and the NEPAD Environmental Action Plan (EAP) can be actively pursued.

In addition agencies have committed to a 1-to-4 leveraging ratio for use of SIP resources, with already over US$1 billion in leveraged resources identified.

Highlights of the Strategic Investment Program

Funding boost - the $150 million investment by the GEF is expected to catalyse close to $1 billion in cofinancing, marking it as the single-largest effort aimed at restoring soil fertility and preventing land degradation on the African continent. The SIP is designed to directly support the scale up of SLM under both the CAADP and EAP initiatives.

Supporting programs, not projects : Rather than attacking problems project by project, the new programmatic approach adopted by SIP will allow individual countries to focus their strategies on a clear set of priority issues for the global environment, to build and capture synergies, and apply a common set of tracking tools to monitor progress.

Supporting a regional approach – to help countries and the GEF to aggregate national programs at the regional level, share knowledge across countries, and allow for the scaling-up of beneficial impacts across the Sub-Saharan Africa region.

Countries engaging in the SIP : Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Comoros, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. The SIP also supports several regional programs.

All SIP operations are initiated via regular country dialogues with agencies and their preparation will follow a country-led process.

Moving forward, these operations will progressively involve the development of a country SLM investment framework. This means SIP operations will in many cases contribute to establishing a country-led programmatic approach to investment in SLM.

Partnership principles

The SIP is guided by key partnership principles consistent with the underlying principles of NEPAD’s CAADP.

Principles for SIP Implementation
 SIP partners agree to harmoniSe approaches and enhance joint programming consistent with the commitments taken under the TerrAfrica partnership for SLM scale-up in Sub-Saharan Africa.

 SIP partners will operate within agreed implementation principles and criteria defined by the program document.

 SIP partners acknowledge and work to enhance operational support to SLM priorities advocated by countries, AU/NEPAD programs, and the UNCCD.

 SIP partners’ activities will be guided by a country-driven process and will be results focused.

 SIP partners are committed to a strong monitoring and evaluation process that will enhance the sharing of experience by each partner, beneficiary countries and other actors, and will provide strategic feedback loops to guide implementation.

 SIP partners will operate in a transparent, trusting, and timely manner both among partners and with other counterparts and stakeholders. Source : NEPAD