It is widely believed that by stimulating growth through sustainable infrastructure, regional integration and good governance will help address the social imbalances outlined in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.  At the G8 meeting in Gleneagles in 2005, leaders called on countries to double their funding in infrastructure in Africa and it is expected that over the coming years donors and development partners would increase funding for African regional programmes including infrastructure development. The cost of addressing Africa’s infrastructure needs is around some $93 billion a year. Even if major potential efficiency gains are captured, Africa would still face an infrastructure funding gap of $31 billion a year, mainly in power.  Yet experience has shown that obstacles to development are primarily political, especially where needs are most dire.

Horn of Africa Initiative (HOAI)

This initiative originates from the European Union (EU) regional political partnership for peace and security strategy for the Horn of Africa. It identified the problems originating from the Horn region and affecting the EU and promised cooperation with IGAD to find a lasting solution in drugs, trafficking, illegal immigrants, Islamic fundamentalism, terrorism and governance issues. IGAD was of the view that these problems were as a result of underdevelopment. The Horn of Africa Initiative had indeed ignored the underlying causes such as abject poverty, poor physical infrastructure communications and institutionalized dependency on food aid. Consequently the focus of the strategy widened and the initiative became a regional political partnership for peace, security and development in the Horn of Africa region.
The implementation of the strategy was launched jointly by the seven governments in the Horn region (Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda) and EU in April 2007. The launch was followed up by the 1st Joint Assessment Mission, JAM 1 (Djibouti, October 2007) and the 2nd Joint Assessment Mission, JAM 2 (Mombasa, May 2009).