Cautious return for World Bank

The World Bank is reopening an office in the Chadian capital N’djamena nearly a year after armed conflict forced it to close, and months after the Bank pulled out of an oil pipeline project after concluding that Chad had failed to meet agreements on commiting oil revenues to poverty reduction. 



But a Bank official said it was a limited step and that any expanded support by the Bank depended on the government’s performance on reducing poverty.



“Any increase beyond what we have now in Chad would require a renewed commitment from the government that new programmes [would] directly benefit the population and help to overcome poverty… For now, our presence in Chad is designed to monitor our existing work,” Michel Wormser, the World Bank’s director for Africa operations, told IRIN.



Currently the World Bank is funding education, HIV/AIDS and agricultural programmes in Chad, which Wormser said were “going well and delivering results for the poor”.



The Bank’s main objectives in what it calls a “partial” reopening are to supervise these ongoing projects more closely and to engage with its partners and civil society - “and the government should it so wish” - towards a programme to support inclusive development, he said.



When it quit the pipeline project in September the Bank said in a statement: “If the Government of Chad wishes to focus its energies on a programme to support inclusive development to overcome poverty, assist displaced people, and improve governance and effectiveness to achieve results, the World Bank is willing to work with Chad to assist.”



Wormser said this was still the case. “The onus is now on the government to demonstrate it has an interest in an inclusive programme to overcome poverty,” he told IRIN.



Chad’s minister of economy and planning, Ousmane Mater Brémé, told IRIN: “We are satisfied [with the reopening] because the World Bank is a significant partner.”



Some Chadians sceptical



The World Bank’s move comes at a time of socio-economic unrest in N’djamena, and some Chadians are sceptical about the Bank’s return.



“We would like to know what concrete propositions the World Bank will bring,” said Delphine Djiraibé Kemneloum, coordinator of the Monitoring Committee for Peace and Reconciliation. “We want to know what they plan to do to ensure that Chad’s oil revenues will be used to the benefit of the population.”



Chad's oil revenues for 2008 are expected to be US$1.68 billion, according to the World Bank.



Kemneloum pointed to the ongoing insecurity in the country, where rebels regularly mount attacks on the government, saying the authorities can always use this as a rationale for spending money on arms rather than on social programmes.



Chadians in N’djamena told IRIN the people are getting poorer while prices for essential goods are rising. They said violent crime - including domestic violence - was on the rise.



“Given the current conditions in Chad we cannot even talk about durable development,” she said. “Chadians are dying. Whom would any development even serve?”



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