$2m Bahrain aid for Islamic fund

from the Gulf Daily News

By RASHA AL QAhtani

BAHRAIN is joining international efforts to help reduce poverty in Muslim countries by contributing more than $2 million (BD756,000), it was anno-unced yesterday.

The move is part of the country's commitment to the Islamic Development Bank's (IDB) Islamic Solidarity Fund for Development (ISFD) aimed at poverty reduction.

"Bahrain and other contributing countries have been supporting the ISFD since its establishment in 2004 and this amount will be very beneficial to the poor in some Muslim countries," said IDB president Dr Ahmed Mohammed Ali.

The Fund recently approved the first programmes for sponsorship in its Fight for Poverty Reduction scheme.

The first two programmes under the five-year strategy of the ISFD will be covered by a $10 billion (BD3.78m) Waqf fund recently created by the bank for poverty reduction in Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) in member countries.

The two programmes, known as the Vocational Literacy Programme for Poverty Alleviation (VOLIP) and the Microfinance Support Programme (MFSP), will seek to provide together some $1bn in financing over the next five years to help address some of the most fundamental causes of poverty in member nations of the IDB, namely lack of education and of employment opportunities.

Dr Ali said that the ISFD was focused on increasing productivity and combating persisting problems of poverty, illiteracy and epidemics.

He was speaking at the opening ceremony of the IDB's fourth Meeting of Women's Advisory Panel yesterday held at the Regency InterContinental Bahrain.

The two-day meeting addresses a number of key topics, including plans and strategies for empowering women, progress on current projects of the IDB's Advisory Panel and the experience of member states.

It also includes a presentation on the Bahrain's successes to promote the role of women by Supreme Council for Women secretary-general Dr Lulwa Al Awadhi.

The event brings together representatives from a group of IDB's member states, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Sudan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Turkey and Guinea.

The representatives come from a variety of academic disciplines, have diverse professional backgrounds and enjoy broad experience with development at the national and international levels as well as with both civil society and government, say officials.

Dr Ali said that IDB was committed to supporting development across the Islamic world and believes that women have a critical role to play.

"The Women's Advisory Panel and the bank are now working in a systematic way to ensure that women's participation in society is enhanced," he said.

"The advisory panel and the bank itself have a number of important initiatives that pay particular attention to the role of women."

"Key among these is the ISFD which aims to reduce poverty among the poorest Islamic nations."

"It also seeks to address the needs of the poorest of poor which often include women and children."

Bahrain is sparing no effort in promoting the role of women in the development process, Finance Minister and IDB board of governors chairman Shaikh Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Khalifa said at the opening ceremony.

"Low income countries are likely to need up to $23.8bn (BD9bn) to meet the gender equality and empowerment of women requirements in the Millennium Development Goals," said Shaikh Ahmed.

"It is done here mainly through the financial allocations necessary for this objective in the state budget and the role of Bahrain Development Bank (BDB) in providing financing and technical assistance to small and medium size projects of Bahrain's women entrepreneurs.

"No sustainable development or economic growth could be achieved without investment in human resources. Subsequently, ignoring half of the human capital of any country would seriously hinder its progress opportunities.

Islamic bank seeks funds for anti-poverty drive

from The Guardian

By Pascal Fletcher
DAKAR, The Islamic Development Bank hopes an Islamic summit in Senegal next week can swell its anti-poverty fund for Africa, channelling wealth from Muslim oil producers to the world's poorest continent, its president said.

The 56-member IDB, which groups together some of the richest and the poorest nations on the planet, created an Islamic Solidarity Fund for Development last year as a specialised window to try to push back poverty levels in the group. It is mostly aimed at Africa but can also help other regions.

IDB President Ahmed Mohammed Ali told Reuters that out of a target of $10 billion for the fund, $2.6 billion had already been pledged by member states, the bank itself and other financing sources.

He expected further pledges for the fund at the the March 13-14 summit of the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to be held in the Senegalese capital Dakar. Some 40 heads of state were due to attend.

"Hopefully, we expect other member countries will announce their support and participation," Ali said in a telephone interview late on Monday from IDB headquarters in Saudi Arabia.

He was confident the $10 billion target for the anti-poverty fund could be achieved by the end of the decade.

"Africa is at the top of our priorities ... so we hope the IDB with this new poverty alleviation fund will be more active in Africa," the bank president said.

Ali said the IDB had a policy of cooperating with a wide range of lenders, be they member governments, private sector investors, related finance institutions like the OPEC Fund or the Kuwaiti Fund for Development, or other multilateral lenders like the World Bank or the African Development Bank.

"Really, it is a collective effort," he said, adding the Islamic bank was already involved in financing hydroelectric, irrigation, highway and water projects in Africa.

For example, landlocked Niger and Mali recently secured more than $400 million from mainly Islamic donors, mobilised by the IDB, to builds hydroelectric dams on West Africa's Niger river.

ISLAMIC INVESTMENT WAVE

Ali said the IDB board had approved a five-year human resource development programme which aimed to funnel a total of $15 billion into projects that especially targeted health and education in Africa. The bank would provide $2 billion from its anti-povery fund and seek to mobilise the rest from lenders.

Specific programmes for micro-financing, vocational training and anti-malaria prevention were already being launched, as part of the IDB's support for the U.N.-backed Millennium Development Goals that seek to cut world poverty levels by half by 2015.

The IDB's campaign to channel more development funds to Africa comes at a time when investors from Gulf Arab states, such as Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, are snapping up multi-billion dollar contracts on the continent. In West Africa, they have often beaten European companies to deals.

"There are a number of private investors from the Gulf Cooperation Council countries that are showing greater interest in Africa and are investing very heavily in many infrastructure projects such as ports, power and so forth," Ali said.
"The IDB is happy to support such investment," he said.

He rejected suggestions that the world's Islamic community was seeking to compete for political and economic influence in Africa against powerful new players like China and India or against the United States and Europe.

"I don't think there is competition ... there is need," Ali said. "The needs of Africa are so great that all these efforts are required really to make a difference," he added.

The IDB, founded in 1975 by the OIC, practises its banking under Islamic guidelines, which prohibits the charging of intrerest on its financial loans but aims to cover its expenses through the projects it finances.

As the world's conventional banking systems feels the squeeze of a credit crunch from the subprime crisis, Islamic finance is reported to be booming.

Islamic bank launches $10 bln poverty fund

from Reuters

By Diadie Ba

DAKAR, March 30 (Reuters) - The Islamic Development Bank launched a $10 billion fund on Wednesday to combat poverty in developing Muslim nations in Africa and other parts of the world.

The fund, which has an initial endowment of $1.4 billion, will be dedicated to alleviating poverty, promoting health and universal education, and empowering women in the bank's 56 member countries.

"This launching ceremony of the IDB's Poverty Alleviation Fund symbolises a revitalisation of the Islamic community in a world where unmatched wealth is next to absolute poverty," the host of the bank's annual meeting, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, told delegates.

Saudi Arabia has already pledged to contribute $1 billion, Kuwait $300 million, Iran $100 million and Senegal $10 million, bank officials said.

The aim of the fund is to help meet the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), proposed by then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan and approved by world leaders in 2000.

They include cutting extreme poverty by half, ensuring universal primary education, and stemming the AIDS pandemic, all by 2015, among others.

IDB Vice-President Amadou Babacar Cisse said the Saudi Arabian-based bank would be active across the whole of the African continent, not just in those countries where Islam was the predominant religion.

"For us the main goal on the African continent is the fight against poverty," Cisse told Reuters. "We are not a religious-orientated institution."

Under Islamic law, the bank may not charge interest on its financial loans but it aims to cover its expenses in the projects it finances. It sees its operations complementing the activities of other multilateral lenders such as the World Bank.

"The Bretton Woods institutions are our long-time partners. We have always cooperated with those institutions," Cisse said.