Islamic Development Bank $10B Poverty Alleviation Fund

Amadou Boubacar Cissé, Vice-President of the Islamic Development Bank: a former Prime Minister of Niger with two decades of experience at the World Bank Lead the Press Conference

"A proposed $10 billion poverty alleviation fund created by the Islamic Development Bank would become fully operational in mid-2007, Amadou Boubacar Cissé, the institution’s Vice-President, said today at a Headquarters press conference organized in connection with the General Assembly’s informal thematic debate on “Partnerships towards Achieving the Millennium Development Goals: Taking Stock and Moving Forward”.....


......The 56-member Islamic Development Bank is a multilateral institution comprising developing countries in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Commonwealth of Independent States, with a mandate to combat poverty.

The Fund would operate within the framework of the Millennium Development Goals and focus on:

• primary education (especially for girls);
• health (malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases);
• infrastructure;
• agriculture;
• microfinance;
• emergency assistance; and recovery
• reconstruction.

Financing would be provided on concessional terms, primarily for the 25 least developed Islamic Bank members.

".....The fund would be available for the 56 member countries, he added, stressing that financing terms would be compatible with sharia. That meant the Bank would focus on covering its administrative costs only. Allocations to the fund would be considered grants, and loans would be made under specific criteria. Resource replenishment would be considered a procedural issue to be resolved by May....."

".....To a final question on lending conditions, he said the Islamic Development Bank did not impose “World Bank-style” conditions on its loans. Rather, it was debating with its partners how best to use resources to develop the best possible programmes. The poverty fund would target the least developed members, 80 per cent of which were in Africa."

-UN Press Release, November, 2006