Invest in climate-resilient small infrastructure to enhance production and trade.
Overview: The pillar seeks to transform agropastoralist and ICBT services in borderland communities from traditional and rudimentary practices to scaled-up, environmentally friendly, climate-smart capacities that reduce transaction costs, reduce damages and wastage, facilitate good market access, and enhance safe environmental and healthcare regime. Specific emphasis shall be placed on infrastructure that is resistant to damage by extreme weather, inadequate power supplies and climate change.
Borderlands infrastructure system modelling exercises could strengthen the evidence for making deliberate programmatic choices that enhance resilient and sustainable physical assets. Investment in data and research could support the prediction of the extent of physical infrastructure required for the catalyzation of development for specific borderlands. It could also demonstrate how social innovation may support bridging borderland infrastructure gaps. In addition, it will facilitate predictive analysis of future infrastructure needs, for instance, in areas like water, energy, and digital infrastructure, and how this could impact the medium to long-term sustainability of the specific border cluster. Such modelling and analysis will also contribute to predictions on how patterns of infrastructure development could anticipate risks and threats, particularly those relating to climate change, and recommend risk-informed development patterns.
Innovation for water infrastructure development is critical since most borderlands are generally water infrastructure-challenged. In addition, several borderlands fall in the Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs) category. Due to limited sustainability approaches, where water is available, there is often wastage and mismanagement. Rain-fed agropastoralist practices have also proven unreliable for most of these regions. As water is essential to life, there are substantial social, conflict, economic and transaction costs to borderland inhabitants and businesses due to poor water management systems. The ABC recognizes the opportunity to massively and sustainably deploy a technique like drip irrigation to the ASALs regions, harvested from sustainable sources and featuring the slow application of soil through continuous drops at a given time interval.
Inadequate market infrastructure is a barrier to ICBT. The ABC seeks to build a market infrastructure that promotes cross-border cohesion, allows for fair trade, is secure, provides specific support to women and their dependents, utilizes climate-smart approaches for sustainability, and optimizes profit for informal players. Market infrastructure is critical to borderlands communities as they provide ease of doing business and improve the livelihoods of most inhabitants. They are also focal locations for inter-communal interaction and the sustenance of civic pride. Construction of market infrastructure should be based on feasibility studies, market infrastructure gap analysis (including environmental impact assessment) and detailed concept design.
The provision of cross-border transport infrastructure is essential to mobility and ease of doing business. The ABC seeks to facilitate transportation infrastructures like motorcycles, motor vehicles, and boats to transport commodities from the primary production centres through its development assistance. In addition, the Centre will support transportation services, which include distribution, logistics, finance, insurance and marketing for borderland transport providers. Thirdly, the Centre will advocate unlocking complex legal, policy and socio-cultural issues that undermine efficient transport service delivery to the borderlands.
Borderlands interventions should both optimize existing storage facilities while partnering with cooperatives and VSLAs to develop new climate-smart and innovative alternative storage systems that the beneficiaries can easily maintain. Most borderland commodities are perishable, and adequate storage systems are critical to doing business. Yet, most commodity producers suffer higher transaction costs, losses due to the perishability of goods, being compelled to sell their products for cheap and several other challenges due to inadequate storage facilities. Many borderlands do not have silos or warehouses for storage; where they exist, they are not affordable to commodity producers.
Borderlands investments should fund processing facilities that support value and supply chains development, with a focus on capacity required to refine and process raw agricultural and livestock goods. Processing is critical to agropastoralists in particular. It entails investment in technical know-how, physical infrastructure to house the processing units, machines and tools for the actual processing, security of the assets, and maintenance costs. Processing facilities support transforming, packaging, sorting, and grading livestock and agricultural products into goods that fit homes and other users Processing includes washing, grading, sizing, drying, extracting, sorting, cutting, pressing, bagging, branding, packaging, milling, fermenting, pasteurising, preserving, bottling among other elements. Sustainability and management are critical to infrastructure development. ABC’s support shall include ESG standards and criteria, which are climate-smart and clearly outline long-term maintenance and optimization of established infrastructure. In addition, they shall include systems and processes for securing the infrastructure from all sorts of security threats in close coordination with security forces and local authorities.
Sample activities under this pillar include:
- Inclusive, holistic and transparent infrastructure design and delivery planning with Government, local authorities and communities.
- Conducting environmental impact assessments to enable sustainability.
- Policy advocacy for the free movement of persons and goods across borders.
- Development of nodal infrastructure that connects cross-border traders.
- Improved efficiency by enhancing value-for-money and sustainable long-term management of assets by beneficiaries.
- Innovative water infrastructure management system.
- Strengthen raw material processing facilities.
- Child-care or sanitary facilities in marketplaces and
