MADAGASCAR

Reference: 

Dobbin International Inc and Ergo Strategy Group. 2019. Strategy for the Sustainable Development of Boke Prefecture, Guinea. Consulting report prepared for PAGSEM, the Guinea Ministry of Mines and Geology and The World Bank Group. 

The Anosy Region in southeast Madagascar is one of the poorest parts of the country, with more than 80 percent of its people living below the national poverty line. The region, covering 16,000 km2, suffers from 75 percent illiteracy, high adult morbidity and infant mortality, inadequate medical facilities and a disintegrating infrastructure. However, despite low economic growth the region has high potential for development. Its 150 kilometers of coastline support tourism, fisheries and agriculture and its biodiversity makes it a global environmental hotspot. Ninety-five percent of its flora is endemic, with several species of lemur found nowhere else in the world. The region also has one of the world’s richest deposits of ilmenite. 

The Anosy Regional Development Framework (RDF) project, led by DI and the Anosy Regional Development Committee (CRD), is an example of a successful private-public initiative between QMM (a Division of Rio Tinto), the World Bank Group, other donors, and the regional government. Rio Tinto’s position was that it was critical to support this impoverished region – because the mine would be successful only if the region was successful. 

The RDF project instituted DI’s approach for strategic, participatory, collaborative, and multi-sector regional development and economic planning approach. This approach was eventually adopted by the Malagasy government to carry out its decentralization efforts throughout the country. The partnership also cultivated new local and national leadership: many Anosy regional actors that DI worked with and trained advanced to key positions in the national government as chiefs of the newly established Decentralization Office for the Anosy and Menabe Regions; and two other Anosy leading regional actors (the President of the CRD and the Prefect) became Ministers of Interior and Decentralization respectively.

The President of Madagascar, seeing the results in the Anosy Region, eliminated the six provinces in the country that had been in place for over seventy years, and created twenty-two (22) new regions and asked that each region prepare a regional development strategy along similar lines to those of the Anosy Regional Development Framework. The Anosy RDF project is a specific example of where regional and local economic development and mining can have strong synergies. One of the major obstacles to developing the mine was the financing of a port, as the mining company would not be able to undertake the whole investment itself. Through the regional planning process (with the involvement of the company), a broader and participative regional analysis showed that many sectors needed the port and that a multi-use port could substantially influence the economic development of the region and the nation. Thanks to the project, the Government of Madagascar obtained the necessary information upon which to consider a financial contribution through the World Bank to the port and was able to make a decision in favor of a multi-use port based on an understanding of the broader interests and knowledge of the regional economy. 

US $500 Million investments committed in year one of the twenty-year regional development plan. Attracted multiple investors into the region from government, private sector, IFIs, and NGOs. Resulted in a multi-use port for use by a variety of sectors that also made the ilmenite mine feasible.

DI Identified seven multi-sector growth poles and corridors and prepared a US $715 million investment plan over 20 years across every sector. In the first year of the 20-year plan, the Anosy Region received US $500 million in investment and the DI strategic plan made the ilmenite mine feasible with a multi-use port funded by Rio Tinto and The World Bank – rather than a single use mining port funded by Rio Tinto alone.