Mogadishu - The Federal Government of Somalia led by Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke has met with development partners under the Somali Development and Reconstruction Facility-Steering Commitee to review projects to be funded under the New Deal for Somalia.
 

The Somali Development and Reconstruction Facility is the umbrella architecture that streamlines funding instruments, coordinates and aligns development support towards projects under the Somali New Deal Compact. The New Deal identifies key priorities for Somalia encompassed under five Peace and State building Goals (PSGs): Inclusive Politics, Security, Justice, Economic Foundations and Service and Revenue generation for the government.
 

The meeting, held in Mogadishu, was attended by over 60 participants, among them seven key ministers from the Federal Government, ministers from Puntland, the Interim Jubba Administration and the Interim South West Administration and officials from the Banadir Regional Administration and Galmudug. Development partners including the United Nations, the World Bank, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Turkey, Norway, EU and the United States also participated in the meeting, some through a video link from Nairobi.
 

The meeting endorsed 11 priority programs to be funded through the UN Multi Partner Trust Fund and the World Bank Multi Partner Fund established under the SDRF. The programmes range from support to constitutional review and state formation and electoral process, rule of law, youth employment, ICT and institutional capacity development.

“This is a crucial moment and a test on the Compact and its architecture, in which we collectively invested since 2013. As we expressed in Brussels, ultimately the success of the Compact will be measured by the improvement it brings to the lives of Somali people, that is delivery,” Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Sharmarke said at the meeting. “Funding allocations have to be guided by the needs of Somalia and identified through the SDRF process and structures. Prioritization and sequencing of the needs will be necessary to match the available resources with the overall needs.”

He reminded participants of their collective commitments and of the urgent need to advance delivery to the Somali people.
 

Somalia’s Minister for Planning and International Cooperation Abdirahman Ainte whose ministry is the lead government agency in charge of the implementation of the New Deal Framework, expressed optimism that the programmes would be successfully implemented.
 

“The intention of today’s meeting or objectives were to approve a number of programmes, about 11 projects that are going to be implemented, half of them by the UN and the other half by the World Bank and all funded through the SDRF funding windows. All the projects have been approved with some comments or discussions and I think the key element here was the need to strengthen the processes of the New Deal and to try to strengthen the Somali ownership and the government leadership and coordination on all of them,” Minister Ainte said.
 

“The main purpose today was to discuss some priority actions that the government can implement in partnership with the United Nations, the World Bank and the international donor community. This is part of the New Deal Framework and today, we have discussed about 11 different priorities starting from support to state formation, support to the constitutional review process and we were also talking about programming in terms of rule of law, access to justice, youth employment and capacity development,” said Philippe Lazzarini, Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General and Resident Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia. “So today was a meeting dedicated to that, but basically we agreed that it is now time to shift from the long discussions we’ve had over the last 18 months to delivery for the Somalis and delivery led by the Somalis”.

DSRSG Lazzarini stressed the importance of all partners working under the leadership of the FGS, and urged participants to commit to an open and regular dialogue that would allow available resources to be appropriately matched with the priorities and sequencing of activities needed in Somalia