By Seleoe Nonyane
The government has in collaboration with the World Bank Group (WBG) launched the newly-endorsed Country Partnership Framework (CPF) for 2024-2028.
Endorsed on May 16 2023, the joint partnership provides the Bank’s strategic support to Lesotho.
The CPF provides an outline of knowledge products and planned financial resource envelope to implement the agreed support from the WBG to Lesotho.
It also focuses on an agreed results matrix against which the WBG and the government of Lesotho will track and measure achievements throughout the period of the project.
The main objective of the CPF for FY24-28 is to promote a private sector driven, export-oriented economy for job creation and effective public sector.
This will be supported by three High-Level Outcomes (HLOs) which are : Increased employment in the private sector (HLO1), Improved human capital outcomes (HLO2) and Improved climate resilience (HLO3)
Promoting digitalisation and gender equality are two cross-cutting themes. In order to ensure impact at scale, the WBG will implement the CPF differently from the previous ones signed with Lesotho.
WBG country director, Marie Franҫoise Marie-Nelly, said the new CPF aims to consolidate the previous efforts, strengthen the nature of the engagement and achieve impact scale.
She said the programme will directly support improvement in governance and capacity building of the public sector, while adopting a territorial development approach to sharpen focus on poorer regions.
She noted that specific attention would be given to gender equality and digitalisation in all World Bank activities.
“Building a digital economy is one of three priorities of the World Bank Africa Strategy for 2019-23. The Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD) update also highlighted the potential of digital transformation for Lesotho’s development.
“Grounded in the findings of the 2020 Lesotho Digital Economy Diagnostic, the CPF will promote digitalisation as across cutting theme by ensuring key interventions across the three pillars of the CPF – to stimulate digitally enabled private sector, citizens and government, address bottlenecks for digital economy development and use digital technology to help create jobs, enhance service delivery and strengthen climate resilience,” Marie-nelly said.
With regard to gender, the 2022 Lesotho Gender Assessment sets out eight priorities to address gender gaps.
While Lesotho has made significant legislative progress, women continue to face cross-cutting barriers, due to patriarchal gender norms, contradictions between customary and statutory law, and constraints in effective implementation of progressive legislation.
So, to address these gaps, the assessment recommends, inter alia: improving working conditions for women; supporting pregnant, parenting, and at risk-adolescent girls stay in school and facilitate return; supporting boys and girls to enter and stay in secondary school and make it easy for them to return if they drop out; and promoting women’s land rights, with a focus on rural women.
Some of the recommendations are under implementation through the active World Bank-financed project such the Pathways to Sustainable Livelihood Project (PSLP).
The new CPF will build on what worked well in the previous CPF, for example, commercial fruit farms supported by the previous private sector project provide a strong basis from scaling up commercial horticulture.
It will also strengthen partnerships with government and other stakeholders: Stronger partnerships will enable stronger programme ownership and accountability.
Furthermore, the CPF will follow a territorial development approach which will enable better focus for harnessing opportunities for private sector development in urban areas as well as reducing poverty and improving service delivery in rural and mountainous areas.
For her part, the minister of finance and development planning, Dr Retṧelisitsoe Matlanyane, indicated that through the CPF, Lesotho is expected to benefit not only from its national allocation, but also from other windows that provide finance for specific goals.
Matlanyane noted disclosed that new windows have been introduced and the government will engage further with the World Bank Country Office to determine the best options under these windows, for the financing the pipeline and future projects while considering efficiency, risk and costs.
“I am delighted to see that the use of the Development Policy Operation to accelerate reforms will also be considered during this CPF cycle that we are launching today.
“These resources will help to reduce fiscal pressures by making public spending more efficient and transparent, while reducing the fiscal costs and risks.
“This support is key in strengthening human capital development as a major input to economic growth,” she said.
She added that the ball was now in their (government’s) court to make efficient use of these resources.
It is only through joint continual efforts, dedication, and hard work that the trajectory of this country may change for the better.
