The Mano River Union (MRU), which is home to Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, is a region endowed with natural resources, vibrant civil society, and strong social cohesion including amongst border communities. However, despite these resources, domestic, cross border and international factors continue to drive political and economic instability. Investments in social and economic development development, strengthening of state institutions and innovation around cross-border initiatives have not yet added up to a reliable pathway out of fragility. 

To help interrogate why positive efforts to address fragility fall short, why negative dynamics persist, and what might be done about it, the MRU Secretariat, the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the United Nations (UN) jointly commissioned a fragility and resilience assessment of the MRU subregion. Funded with the support of the Partnership Facility of the Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO), the “Fragility and Resilience in the Mano River Union Subregion: Consolidating peace dividends amid persistent challenges” was built upon a thorough desk review and a series of thematic consultative workshops, assembled and analyzed by the International Growth Centre of the London School of Economics, with the contribution of experts from academia, think tanks, civil society, United Nations, and other development partners.  

 The assessment provides a fresh analysis of the drivers of fragility and opportunities for resilience in the MRU subregion with a focus on trends and threats at the subregional level, complementing already existing analyses undertaken at the individual, country-by-country level. The report recommends that governments and development partners nurture a fundamentally more balanced system of voice and influence across the many stakeholders for positive societal change and pursue national priorities in their development plans that articulate how they intend to hold their own officials and affiliated politicians to account for these priorities. To take these recommendations forward, the MRU Secretariat, AfDB and the UN are identifying concrete actions towards implementing the recommendations through existing or new programmes or projects. 

 These efforts are in line with AfDB’s “Strategy for Addressing Fragility and Building Resilience in Africa (2022-2026)” that builds on 20 years of expertise in operating in fragile contexts such as the MRU sub-region, and the on-going collaboration with PBSO, for joint efforts to advance peacebuilding based on strong national ownership.