DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE (Joint Ministerial Committee of the Boards of Governors of the Bank and the Fund on the Transfer of Real Resources to Developing Countries) NINETY-NINTH MEETING WASHINGTON, D.C. – APRIL 13, 2019 DC/S/2019-0010(E) April 13, 2019 Statement by H.E. Alamine Ousmane Mey Minister of Economy, Planning and Regional Development Cameroon On behalf of the Group II African Countries Statement by H.E. Alamine Ousmane Mey Minister of Economy, Planning and Regional Development Cameroon On behalf of the Group II African Countries 99th Meeting of the Development Committee April 13, 2019 Washington, D.C. This written statement on behalf of the Africa Group II Constituency addresses the two topics appearing on the agenda of the Development Committee, namely: (1) Mainstreaming the Approach to Disruptive and Transformative Technologies at the World Bank Group; and (2) Update: The Forward Look and IBRD- IFC Capital Package Implementation. Mainstreaming the Approach to Disruptive and Transformative Technologies at the World Bank Group We commend the World Bank Group (WBG) for selecting this important topic of mainstreaming the approach to disruptive technologies at the WBG. We believe that this is a wise choice, in view of the potential transformative effect of the emergence of disruptive technologies on our economies, thereby paving the way to significantly accelerate progress toward realizing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). We welcome the WBG’s commitment to promoting and mainstreaming disruptive technologies in WBG operations using the “Build-Boost-Broker” approach. We endorse the five corporate priorities that will effectively support our countries’ efforts to adapt and benefit from rapidly changing technologies. We particularly wish to extend our gratitude to the WBG for launching the Digital Economy Moonshot for Africa initiative, which seeks to ensure that every person, business, and government in Africa is digitally enabled by 2030. We welcome the WBG’s intention to work with the African Union to ensure the successful implementation of this initiative. We urge the institution to explore the possibility of collaborating on this issue with other multilateral development banks and leveraging all partnerships, including South-South partnerships. We encourage IFC and MIGA to support these efforts and identify clear lines of responsibility for mainstreaming and operationalizing this agenda. We request that special attention be accorded to the gender dimension in the implementation of the agenda on disruptive technologies at the WBG. We believe that it is particularly important to focus on improving women’s access to digital jobs. We encourage the WBG to seize the opportunity afforded by the IDA19 replenishment cycle now under way, the We-Fi Initiative, and the World Bank gender strategy to support women’s access to education, training, employment, and capital in the sphere of digital technology. We welcome the opportunities that the implementation of the disruptive technologies agenda could provide in our countries if the risks associated with job loss, exclusion, and data privacy are well managed. It is for this reason that we call on the World Bank to take all necessary steps to enable our countries to benefit from this initiative, through human capital development and the creation of an appropriate regulatory environment. Finally, we invite the WBG to prepare a plan of action to help lay the foundations for a digital economy in each country and to enable us to carefully measure the contribution of this initiative to job creation, economic transformation, and domestic resource mobilization. Update: The Forward Look and IBRD-IFC Capital Package Implementation We wish to thank the staff and senior management of the World Bank Group (WBG) for this progress report with information on steps related to the WBFG Forward Look for 2030 and IBRD-IFC Capital Package Implementation. We welcome the progress made toward the establishment of a better and stronger Bank that is more adapted and better equipped to meet the needs of its clients. We believe that this update reflects the commitment of the WBG to take concerted action to help all our countries, in their diversity, to meet global economic challenges and to progress toward the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. We welcome the priority assigned to IDA countries and the special attention accorded to small States and those affected by conflict and violence. We remain confident that the strengthening over time of the financial capacity of IBRD and IFC, together with the IDA19 replenishment cycle that we hope will be the largest in history, will help ensure the rapid achievement of development results in our countries. We congratulate the World Bank on the significant progress in the implementation of the IDA18 framework. We call on the Bank, nevertheless, to step up its efforts related to the IDA theme “Jobs and Economic Transformation.” In this regard, we request the WBG to prepare a Jobs and Economic Transformation strategy and to establish a clear institutional mechanism to support its implementation. We believe that the institutionalization of this agenda will help promote continuity and anchor it more firmly as a cross-cutting operation of the WBG, with a view to generating real economic transformation in our countries and promoting job creation, particularly among women and youth. We reaffirm the importance of human capital in the pursuit of our development objectives and welcome the considerable progress to operationalize the Human Capital Development Project. We note that, unfortunately, the human development indicators for our countries are, for the most part, significantly below the threshold required to enable our populations to survive and prosper in a rapidly changing world. In this regard, we welcome the support provided to our countries for the promotion of human capital formation, through the provision of financing for social programs in areas such as education, health, and social safety nets. We encourage the World Bank to continue to support our efforts to develop the skills of our populations to meet the demands of the labor market and to enable our economies to be integrated into global value chains. We appreciate the continued efforts of the World Bank to help our countries mobilize their domestic resources, including measures to combat illicit financial flows. Efforts aimed at increasing domestic resource mobilization are particularly important for our countries. However, such actions may be stymied if a significant amount of these resources are lost in the form of illicit financial flows. We therefore encourage the Bank to intensify its work in this area that is so vital to our development. We appreciate the progress made by the World Bank in terms of its support to regional programs. We are of the view that a regional approach to our development issues is essential, given the relatively modest size 2 of the African economies. We call on the WBG to better support African transformation at the regional level. In this regard, we invite the Bank to take advantage of the political momentum created by the launch of the African Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA). We congratulate IFC for effectively implementing the Maximizing Finance for Development (MFD) program, using the Cascade approach to leverage private sector solutions for creating markets. We reaffirm the importance of IFC in the search for sustainable solutions for developing our economies. We invite IFC, in the context of its IFC 3.0 strategy, to mobilize increased funding for private sector investments in IDA countries and fragile States, in accordance with its aim to increase the scope of its annual commitments in these countries by 40 percent by 2030. We call on IFC to play a greater role in the development of the national private sectors in our countries and to tailor its interventions to the specific circumstances of each country, particularly in relation to Small Island States. Lastly, we encourage IBRD and IFC to continue strengthening their mechanisms for monitoring and evaluating progress in relation to the goals of the WBG Forward Look and the strengthening of their financial capacity. 3