African 1Development Bank (AfDB) has created a  tool to tackle fragility in countries, taking into account their capacities and pressure.

The tool, known as Country Resilience and Fragility Assessment (CRFA), uses seven key criteria: political inclusiveness, safety and security, justice, the economy, social cohesion, the regional contagion effect, and climate change.

“The creation of the CRFA represents a significant advance in the assessment of fragility, which is a reality that it is not always easy to pin down or discern. By introducing, for the first time, the concepts of ‘capacities’ and ‘pressures’, this new tool brings much more rigour and effectiveness to the assessment of resilience and fragility, especially since it takes greater account of the national context,” explained Director, Transition States Coordination Office (RDTS), Sibry Tapsoba.

Before its approval by the bank’s Board on September 11, the CRFA was subjected to a range of checks for reliability and effectiveness, conducted under the supervision of the Transition States Coordination Office, with support from the bank’s statistics and resource mobilisation departments.

In addition to assessing resilience and fragility, the new tool is also useful for advocacy and communication and improving and strengthening dialogue between the bank and its regional members. It is expected to help to anticipate crises, thanks to an early warning system.

“What we have here is an assessment tool of unquestionable rigour. It is easy to use; it is reliable and it is accessible to all. It brings an undeniable added value to existing techniques for the assessment of resilience and fragility,” said Riadh Ben Messaoud of the bank’s Resource Mobilisation department.

He stated further that the tool is an important contribution to research for greater effectiveness in the bank’s work.

The CRFA, he added, provides better insight into every dimension of fragility, including the less obvious, making it possible to offer the most appropriate responses in terms of building a country’s capacity and resilience.