How resilient are African countries?

© Hannu Viitanen via 123RF

The African Development Bank has created and refined a new tool to diagnose fragility in countries, taking into account their capacities and pressures they may be under. Called the Country Resilience and Fragility Assessment (CRFA), the tool offers a completely new method of assessing resilience and fragility using seven key criteria: political inclusiveness, safety and security, justice, the economy, social cohesion, the regional contagion effect, and climate change.

"The creation of the CRFA represents a significant advance in the assessment of fragility, which is a reality that it is not always easy to pin down or discern. By introducing, for the first time, the concepts of 'capacities' and 'pressures', this new tool brings much more rigour and effectiveness to the assessment of resilience and fragility, especially since it takes greater account of the national context," explained Sibry Tapsoba, director of the Transition States Coordination Office (RDTS). 

The creation of a new fragility and resilience assessment tool is an important contribution to research efforts for greater effectiveness in the bank's work.

In addition to assessing resilience and fragility, the new tool should also be useful for advocacy and communication and improving and strengthening   dialogue between the bank and its regional members. It should also help to anticipate crises, thanks to an early warning system.

"What we have here is an assessment tool of unquestionable rigour. It is easy to use, it is reliable and it is accessible to all. It brings an undeniable added value to existing techniques for the assessment of resilience and fragility," said Riadh Ben Messaoud, from the bank's resource mobilisation department.
The creation of a new fragility and resilience assessment tool is an important contribution to research efforts for greater effectiveness in the bank's work.

The CRFA provides better insight into every dimension of fragility, including the less obvious, making it possible to offer the most appropriate responses in terms of building a country’s capacity and resilience.