Improving Governance in Africa
What is a fragile situation?
No country is immune to fragility which can be defined as a "condition of elevated risk of institutional
breakdown, societal collapse or violent conflict". While there is no internationally agreed framework or
set of indicators for assessing fragility, for operational purposes and in line with the new strategy, AfDB
categorizes countries and regions by their degree of fragility.
Category
1
• Harmonized list of fragile situations by Multilateral Development Banks; targeted
qualitative fragility assessment; presence of armed conflict in the state's territory;
presence of violent political/social uprisings
• For example, Great Lakes and Central Africa Region, Horn of Africa, Mano River Union,
Sahel
Category
2
•
• Risk of spill-over from neighboring conflict; increasing trend and/or sudden onset of
governance problems; high risk of sustained social/political unrest;
Declining trend in policy and institutional performance and/or presence of important
non-political drivers of fragility
Category
3
• Relatively low risks of violence or societal breakdown; relatively high capacity of social
and political institutions to manage challenges within a legitimate/inclusive framework
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