The World Bank has provided an additional $600 million (about N216 billion) to support projects in the Lake Chad Basin region devastated by the Boko Haram terrorists.
The Breton Woods institution indicated its funding support for the projects at the Berlin Conference on Boko Haram crisis, which held on Monday and Tuesday in Berlin.
The UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, Mr Mark Lowcock, thanked the banks and countries for their generous donations and supports in a series of tweets.
Lowcock enthused: “Thank you WorldBank for your incredible support to Lake Chad Basin and for announcing an additional $600m for projects throughout the region!
“Many thanks AfDB for your grant of US $35.65M to the #LakeChadBasin as well as the announcement of US $57.3M in concessional loans”, he added.
Lowcock also disclosed that the Islamic Development Bank was supporting the Lake Chad Basin with $80 million in concessional loans, while also thanking Ireland for pledging 7.3 million euros; Sweden, 32 million pounds; the Netherlands, 12.1 million pounds; Italy, 15 million pounds; and Poland, 230,000 pounds.
According to him, the African Development Bank (AfDB) supported the Lake Chad Basin region with grants and concessional loans respectively.
The UN humanitarian chief said that he was so pleased “to see the contributions from donors to development activities in the #LakeChadBasin through the UN Peacebuilding Support Office.”
The two day high-level humanitarian conference was organised by the Governments of Nigeria, Germany and Norway, together with the United Nations.
The conference generated about $2.52 billion dollars in pledges and concessional loans, with Germany, the host country, pledging 265 million euros and Norway, 125 million dollars.
Other donors are, Switzerland, 20 million dollars; France, 131 million Euros; Belgium, 45 million Euros; Finland, 2.3 million Euros; and Denmark, 72.5 million dollars.
It would be recalled that the United Kingdom pledged 146 million pounds; Canada, 68 million Canadian dollars; European Union, 231.5 million euros; Luxembourg, 40 million euros and Spain, 3.2 million euros.
