The 2017 Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) “Drought Resilience Summit: Visioning a Transformational Agenda for the Next 5 Years” is a three-day event to be convened in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from 28 – 30 June 2017.
 
The Summit’s objectives is being planned:

• To raise awareness of the current need to redouble resilience and economic development focused investment in the region  in light of the recurrent drought situation;
• To reaffirm the objectives of the IDDRSI resilience agenda that was set in response to the drought of 2010-2011;
• To review the progress made, the challenges met and the opportunities available to advance the process of building drought resilience through national investments programmes as well as partners investments;
• To highlight the need for closer cross-border cooperation and ecological zonal development approach;
• To mobilize all affected stakeholders, including investors; and to accelerate development in critical areas such as infrastructure, agriculture and energy, building greater capacity to manage climate and related economic shocks.

Thematic Focus:

There are three key thematic focus areas that undergird the planned 2017 Drought Resilience Summit:

• Geographic Investment Focus - Geographically, while the Summit will focus on the overall IGAD region), particular emphasis will be placed on the cross-border areas that feature arid and semi-arid terrain (the “Arid and Semi-Arid Lands or ASALs”) where climate change, advancing desertification and ecological degradation are having the greatest negative impact. The IDDRISI Platform stakeholders have specifically targeted eight “Cross Border Clusters” for intervention, and these areas will be of particular importance in terms of the Summit’s resilience and economic development focused resource mobilization and investment aims.
   
• Economic Development Investment Focus – Agriculture (particularly livestock husbandry) infrastructure, energy and trade are key sectors of importance within the IGAD region.  Thus, investment in sector related infrastructure (including storage, irrigation, processing, roads, rail, ports and energy) is of great importance to drive job creation, value added goods production, and inter-regional and international trade. Tourism, a key services sector foreign exchange earner for some countries in the region (especially Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda), and inclusive sector for youth job creation, also requires transport (and other physical) infrastructure and energy sector development to flourish. 
   
• Resilience Investment Focus – Recognizing that capacity enhancement was a key part of the developmental needs within the IGAD region, in terms of the ability of the Member States to respond to the climatic changes that brought on drought and its attendant socio-economic challenges, a significant focus within the IDDRISI program to date has been to address the PESTLE (political, economic, socio-cultural, technological, legal and ecological) aspects and related circumstances within the IGAD region, within the framework of the vision, mission and overall goal as defined by the IDDRSI Strategy.

Notwithstanding this investment, given the continued and increasingly recurrent nature of drought in the region, redoubled and expanded investment in this area is needed   to support the accelerated implementation of IDDRSI over the next five years.

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