AfDB and GCERF Join Forces to Link Community Peace Efforts With Investment in Africa

The partnership brings GCERF’s community-level experience and local relationships together with the Bank’s analytical expertise and ability to support development programmes across Africa.

The African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF) have signed a Letter of Intent to bring community-led efforts to prevent violent extremism closer to development investment across Africa. The cooperation will focus on fragile and conflict-affected settings, where exclusion and limited social and economic opportunities can leave communities exposed to instability and put development progress at risk.

Marie-Laure Akin-Olugbade, Senior Vice President of the African Development Bank Group, and Stefano Manservisi, Chair of the GCERF Governing Board, signed the letter on Monday, 21 September, on the margins of the 81st Session of the United Nations General Assembly. The signing took place at the African Union's Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations in New York, establishing a framework for closer cooperation between organisations working at different levels of development and violence prevention.

Connecting Community Knowledge With Development Finance

The partnership brings GCERF's community-level experience and local relationships together with the Bank's analytical expertise and ability to support development programmes across Africa. Combining those strengths is intended to create stronger connections between communities and the finance, investment and economic opportunities that can support their resilience, giving local knowledge a greater role in shaping wider development decisions.

Both organisations recognise that fragility, exclusion and limited opportunities can create conditions in which violent extremism takes hold, making prevention relevant to the success of development investment. Connecting prevention programmes with broader development efforts can help reduce instability, protect gains already made and improve the chances that investments deliver lasting benefits for the people they serve.

Making Prevention Part of Sustainable Development

"This partnership reflects the simple but important idea that investment in prevention of violent extremism is also an investment in sustainable development," Manservisi said. He described the combination of GCERF's community experience and the Bank's development expertise as a way to strengthen the relationship between local resilience, economic opportunity and long-term stability, placing prevention within the wider work of improving people's prospects.

Akin-Olugbade outlined how the institutions' roles would complement each other, with the Bank helping to reduce investment risks, strengthen institutions and align financing with national priorities. GCERF would contribute community-level prevention, local engagement and approaches that adapt as lessons emerge, drawing on experience particularly relevant to places affected by fragility and conflict. "Together, we can ensure that resilience is not only financed from the top down, but shaped and sustained from the ground up," she said.

Giving Local Experience a Role in National Decisions

Under the framework, community insights and development expertise will inform policies and investments in fragile settings, helping connect decisions about resources with the experiences of people living with insecurity. The organisations will also share learning and identify opportunities for joint initiatives that strengthen prevention, build resilience and support national development outcomes, with cooperation covering both practical experience and the design of future interventions.

The agreement reinforces an approach to fragility centred on people and advances the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus, which connects humanitarian work, longer-term development and peace efforts. Linking local prevention with broader investment gives the partnership a common direction: supporting communities' capacity to withstand instability and ensuring that their knowledge helps shape the development choices affecting their lives.