SOLUTIONS

that broader scale goals need to be pursued in
the interest of development effectiveness. In
any case, however, none of the CSPs has an
overarching framework in which the scaling
up pathways for individual lines of business are
systematically drawn from past to current to
future with a clear vision of scale beyond the
time horizon of the CSP.
Clarity of Lines of Business
The Ethiopia CSP stands out with clearly defined
lines of business (roads, energy, protection of
basic services, private sector development),
followed by Cameroon (roads, power, water/
sanitation, public finance management, business
environment, and land registry), Kenya (roads,
energy, water and sanitation, skills development,
and private sector development), and Sierra Leone
(transport, power, water and sanitation, public
finance management and business environment).
In these cases there is also a clear link for each
business line between past, present and future
engagement.
The CSPs for Nigeria, South Africa and Zambia
are particularly weak in regard to definition
of business lines, in that they describe the
activities in poorly defined, confusing and even
contradictory terms across different parts of the
documents. They also generally do not give a
clear indication whether and how the proposed
activities link up with past AfDB engagement.
Scaling up perspective in business lines
This category involves a number of sub-questions:
• Program selectivity: The Ethiopia CSP is
a model of selectivity, focusing on four
principal lines of business; this was also
strongly endorsed by the CSP Readiness
Review. The Ethiopia CSP also reflects the
intention to deploy fewer, larger loans than in
the past. Other CSPs claim more selectivity
than is actually the case. For example, the
Zambia CSP under the rubric “Support
to Economic & Financial Governance”
includes a wide range of activities, as
reflected in this quote from para. 3.1.15 of
the CSP: “The Bank’s support will consolidate
and improve activities such as budget
management; strengthening audit function of
government; improving procurement systems;
strengthening anticorruption; improving debt
management; enhancing tax reforms; and
support to oversight institutions such as the
Public Accounts Committee of Parliament
with a view to improving transparency
and accountability.” The Tunisia CSP is
particularly bewildering in its multiplicity
of non-lending tasks on top of an already
prolific list of activities supported by loans.
Some CSPs have trust-funded activities that
are not presented as part of their main pillars
of engagement and add to the complexity of
the programs (e.g., Cameroon and DR Congo).
The Nigeria and South Africa CSPs also suffer
from a lack of selectivity.
• Linkage of past and present program to future
engagement: Annex 9 of the Ethiopia CSP is
particularly strong in this regard, as it looks for
each of the business lines at the government’s
recent efforts, remaining challenges, past AfDB
support and its effectiveness, and additional
support to be provided during 2014-18,
specifically with reference to sustainability,
sector governance, gender mainstreaming
and project implementation. In contrast, the
Nigeria, South Africa and Zambia CSPs provide
very little indication of how past activities link
to future ones, although some general lessons
from past engagement are cited. Generally,
however, the individual CSP country reviews
indicate that there is considerable continuity
in AfDB engagement in key programs areas
over time.
• Exit strategies: In a number of CSPs (e.g.,
Kenya, Ethiopia 15 ) it appears that AfDB is
exiting from the agricultural sector (except
15 The lack of an exit strategy is particularly noteworthy in the case of
Ethiopia, since Readiness Review specifically highlighted this as needed.
55
A quarterly knowledge publication from Independent Development Evaluation, African Development Bank Group