Acord e-Newsletter 

No 6 (23 January 2003)
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Article 3

ERITREA: ACORD develops new directions for its work in Eritrea

  Having successfully managed to do meaningful development work in the first post-war period after independence (1993), during the years of peace, during the new war with Ethiopia and during the war’s aftermath, ACORD has now developed a new strategic direction for its future work in Eritrea.  

ACORD’s vision for Eritrea is a nation with continued peace, security and unity, and opportunities for the marginalised to improve their income, live decent lives and remain self-reliant. It envisions a nation that remains people-centred and with a state that remains accountable to the people.

The specific roles ACORD can play to fulfil this vision are by: enabling local communities to formulate and carry out their own plans; enable Eritrean institutions to serve and work well with people at community level; encourage diversification; encourage small scale entrepreneurship; establish a people friendly financial sector; adopt new technologies which enhance self reliance.

The areas and issues which ACORD feels it can work on in Eritrea are

·         poverty reduction (rehabilitating war-affected people, providing access to credit and savings and capacity building)

·         working against gender bias ( providing improved access to resources, engaging in civil society and capacity building of women’s organisations)

·         working on governance issues (capacity building at the grass roots level, advocacy and empowerment of the poor)

·         preventing conflict (conducting research to identify causes of conflict and possible mechanisms for averting clashes and violence; networking and establishing links between actors representing different interest groups)

·         raising awareness of HIV and AIDS (provide access to financial services to orphans and family members; Advisory and counselling services)

·         undertaking advocacy.

  As opposed to other countries in which ACORD works, micro-finance is the foundation for ACORD’s programming in Eritrea. It was with a micro-finance programme that ACORD got started in Eritrea shortly after independence in 1993. It was the micro-finance programme of ACORD that survived the crisis of NGOs in Eritrea in 1997 and also the renewed conflict with Ethiopia from 1998-2002. And it is micro-finance, which stands at the centre of ACORD’s strategic planning for its future in Eritrea.

Future plans are that micro finance activities are extended to new regions and gradually gain independence from ACORD in the form of two Eritrean micro-finance organisations:

a) a federation of autonomous village banks, organised more or less as a co-operative model with a base and an apex

b) a national savings bank and credit scheme with strong regional branches. These have sub-zonal branches and individual clients organised in groups and villages (as presently in the Southern Zone and the Central Zone Saving and Credit Schemes.)

  ACORD also aims to retain property and management responsibility over a Resource Centre, which gives services to these two organisations and gets involved in a number of other activities relevant to micro-finance organisations, but also has a wider poverty reduction and capacity building aim. The Resource Centre will be engaged in training, research, documentation, advisory services, management of micro-finance and the like. It will function on a cost reduction platform, which means that some of its services will have to be paid for. But it does not aim at full financial sustainability. On the contrary, it will absorb some of the training and development costs in connection with establishing sustainable micro-finance organisations in Eritrea and especially in developing new micro-finance products.

For further details, please contact Hasebenebi Kaffel at ACORD Eritrea in Asmara at acord@gemel.com.er or Tel: 291 (1) 184 272

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