Annex 3 - The Burkina Faso Strategy for Accelerated Growth and Sustainable Development

The Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) of Burkina Faso, the Strategy for accelerated growth and sustainable development (Stratégie de croissance accélérée et de développement durable, SCADD, 2011-2015) focuses on four pillars:

1. Accelerated growth through growth poles, employment creation, strengthening of small and medium scale enterprises, the agricultural sector and agribusinesses, investment climate, mines, and infrastructure (water, roads, energy, etc.). The approach implies that accelerated growth and greater poverty reduction through an increase in public investment should have stronger links to the rural economy – given the prevalence of poverty in rural areas.

2. Investment in human development – including a focus on continued expansion in primary education as well as a coordinated expansion of secondary and vocational education, quality improvement of the health and education systems, employment in general and youth employment in particular, and focus on further social inclusion and equity.

3. Reinforcement of the political, economic and local good governance – with an emphasis on continuing to develop robust internal and external controls to curb corruption and ensure accountability of public institutions, justice sector reforms, and continued progress in implementing conformity measures for the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI) principles. Decentralisation and the transfer of competences to the decentralised level is another focus area of the strategy.

4. Integration of cross-cutting issues, especially gender equality, but also natural resource management and demography.

Monitoring and policy dialogue of the SCADD takes its point of departure at sector level, where programmes are monitored and progress is reported on, feeding into an overall joint national policy dialogue. The framework for the dialogue at the overall level is based on a performance matrix with inputs from all sectors. The performance matrix is being evaluated and up-dated every year and provides an important element in the assessment of progress for management and disbursements of both general budget support and sector budget support. A development partner Troika coordinates the general dialogue with the government from the development partner side. The Troika also provides the framework for coordination between the government of Burkina Faso and the development partners providing general budget support.

The overall objective of the SCADD is to achieve the MDGs. However, given the reality on the ground and the progress made so far, a number of SCADD objectives are less ambitious than the MDG objectives, especially in the areas of eradicating extreme poverty, reducing maternal mortality and ensuring quality in the education system. In the area of access to water and access to education, the SCADD objectives are identical to the MDG objectives reflecting that Burkina Faso is more likely to be able to meet these MDG objectives than others.

See annex 4 for an overview of MDG and SCADD indicators.