150 million facility from the International Development Association/International Bank for Reconstruction and Development of the World Bank Group towards the implementation of the Gulf of Guinea Northern Regions Social Cohesion (SOCO) Project (P175043).

The project covers the northern parts of Ghana, Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, and Togo. In Ghana, the Ministry of Local Government, Decentralisation and Rural Development will lead the implementation of Project in forty-eight (48) Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) located in six Regions (namely Northern, North East, Upper East, Upper West, Savannah and Oti regions). The project is expected to deliver resilient community infrastructure and assets through a Community-Driven Development approach (CDD). The proposed Project will be implemented over a period of five (5) years.

The Project Development Objective is “to improve regional collaboration and socio-economic and climate resilience of border-zone communities in the target northern regions of the Gulf of Guinea countries exposed to conflict and climate risks”.

The proposed Project is structured into the following five (5) main components:

The component aims to support communities/clusters in the target 48 Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs), to fully participate in their local development activities through the delivery of local level investments to promote inclusive and resilient communities with enhanced access to economic opportunities, especially in border areas. The Components has three (3) sub-components:

i. Sub-component 1.1: Community investments for strengthening local resilience and inclusion

This sub-component will support increasing access to community-level, climate resilient, socio-economic infrastructure by financing community investment for the construction, rehabilitation, upgrading and/or equipping of community infrastructure designed to enhance the inclusion of women, youth, displaced persons and people with disabilities and their equitable access to social services. Under this sub-component, there will be an open menu of activities and sub-projects (with a negative list) including those in the areas of connectivity, water, sanitation and hygiene stations, natural resource management and climate adaptation, energy, information and communication technology, and social structures.

ii. Sub-component 1.2: Strategic economic activity investments for local economic development.

This sub-component aims to create both short and long-term benefits to existing economic sources of resilience by investing strategically in targeted local markets including livestock markets. The sub-component will finance the rehabilitation of existing rural markets, as well as the development of economic activities (services, development of value chains, quality enhancement, aggregation, and so on) linked to the rehabilitation of these markets with the aim of generating local employment and income.

iii. Sub-component 1.3: Youth engagement and social cohesion activities

The sub-component aims at bringing together and empowering the youth with voice and agency to prioritise and implement investments which allow them to play positive roles in fostering social cohesion and inclusion, build climate resilience and prevent violence in their own and neighbouring communities. Specifically, the sub-component will finance (a) social cohesion activities and events; and/or (b) rehabilitate, upgrade and/or equip cluster-level community infrastructure—that are identified and prioritised by the youth.

This component will support training and capacity-building activities aimed at strengthening the capacity of stakeholders at various levels including individual beneficiaries, MMDAs, youth groups, women groups and other local level actors, as well as national level stakeholders.

This component aims to strengthen regional collaboration across the four target countries to support a coherent response to prevent FCV risks in the Gulf of Guinea (GOG). Specifically, it will finance the establishment of a Regional Cooperation Platform (RCP) under the project, structured around three key pillars: (a) data collection and analysis, (b) knowledge generation, and (c) dialogue building. Data collection activities aim to enhance access to quality data and information to better understand complex regional and national FCV and climate dynamics.

This component will support project management and coordination at the regional, national, and subnational levels to effectively implement project activities. The component's project management areas include planning, implementation, and technical oversight of program activities; social and environmental safeguards management and monitoring; overall financial management (FM) and procurement activities.

This zero-budget component will serve as a contingent emergency funding mechanism that could be triggered in the event of a natural or man-made disaster and/or health crisis such as pandemics through formal declaration of a national emergency or upon a formal request from one of the Governments. In the event of such a disaster/crisis, funds from the unallocated expenditure category or from other project components could be reallocated to finance emergency response expenditures to meet urgent needs.