Advancing Capacity to Address global Challenges through Investment corridors in Africa (ACACIA) project

The concept of 'development corridors' is increasingly used to support economic growth in Africa, driven by international as well as national interests. Development corridors have tremendous development potential yet they face significant challenges. These include uneven development impacts, traversing so-called "underutilised" lands that are generally already populated and managed, and vulnerability to climate change. Such challenges result in a lack of appropriate research capacity in the region. This proposal aims to addresses these challenges through engagement with decision makers and by developing relevant capacity within research institutions and researchers in eastern Africa, China and the UK. The research is targeted to generate decision-relevant evidence and feed it into key decision making processes in order to improve the sustainable development outcomes of investments in development corridors.

The proposal is focused on corridors in eastern Africa, particularly the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT) and the Lamu Port and Lamu-Southern Sudan-Ethiopia Transport Corridor (LAPSSET) in Kenya. The consortium is led by the United Nations Environment Programme-World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), who would be contracted as 'WCMC', and comprises five universities (Cambridge, London School of Economics, Nairobi, Sokoine University of Agriculture and York) and three boundary agents (World-Wide Fund for Nature (Tanzania), African Conservation Centre (ACC) and the China National Centre for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation (NCSC) of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). The work is structured around three outcomes and six Work Packages, fully integrating research and capacity development, and significant policy engagement and outreach.

Together the members of our consortium members are extremely well linked into a number of different mechanisms and processes that will deliver direct impact through the generation of timely, decision relevant research in the short and medium term. We also envisage a longer term impact through a legacy of early-career researchers, senior research leaders, and institutions trained in three different regions who would be available to work with other countries and agencies on issues related to large scale development corridors and how best to plan and implement them in the developing country context, especially in Africa.
At the national scale WWF-Tanzania and ACC in Kenya are members of the SAGCOT and LAPSSET corridor management structures and hence have a direct voice in these bodies. This project will strengthen their roles in these agencies and allow their input to be informed by relevant, demand-driven research for the specific corridor areas. We see this engagement as a critical part of the impact pathway to influence the decisions made around the current set of development corridors. The likelihood of this happening is strengthened through the commitment by SAGCOT to using the project results.
In China, researchers have been called upon by central government to support the implementation of the country's 13th Five Year Plan, including the country's overseas development assistance and foreign investment such as the Belt and Road Initiative. The country is seeking institutional capital development to ensure that these funds are invested in a sustainable manner in order to realise its international commitments, including the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. NCSC houses many of the researchers who have been tasked with providing such support to central government. It sits within China's leading economic and development ministry, NDRC, and therefore has extensive convening power across a range of relevant government departments and research institutes. This influence, together with NCSC's experience of South-South Cooperation mechanisms, actively promoting knowledge sharing on climate resilient sustainable development, means that the capacity built will influence China's growing corridor investment in East Africa and other target countries of the Belt and Road Initiative.
At international scale, collectively, the UK-based partners will be able to work through their excellent networks within the UN system, within national governments in East Africa and China, and with both academic and civil society partners to present the project results so that they can inform the design of development corridors in other countries. For example, UNEP-WCMC will be able to disseminate the results to the East African Community via the UN Economic Commission for Africa and to the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment. UKAID supported work (through the Darwin Initiative) on mainstreaming biodiversity into national development plans, including through an African Leadership Group, will also contribute to upscaling project results to additional African countries.
UNEP-WCMC is also working to support countries in delivering on the SDGs, in particular recognising the environmental dimension to multiple SDG targets including those related to agriculture, water, growth, infrastructure, cities, and climate change. UNEP-WCMC and WWF are also working with the extractive, oil and gas, agriculture, and marine transport industries to integrate natural capital into their operations. These industries are often at the heart of growth corridor development. Both UNEP-WCMC and WWF will use this experience to build the capacity of researchers in Kenya, Tanzania and China to make the business case for the integration of natural capital into corridor design.