Why should the African Development Fund include preventing child sexual exploitation, abuse, and harassment and improving engagement with civil society as key priorities during its 17th replenishment?

The African Development Fund (ADF) is the arm of the African Development Bank (AfDB) that provides grants and below-market loans to the continent’s least developed countries. Every three years, donors meet to replenish ADF’s funds and review its priorities. Negotiations for ADF’s 17th Replenishment (ADF-17) are currently underway, with the final pledging session set for December 2025. 

As we approach the final replenishment meeting, BIC urges donors and ADF to commit to ambitious priorities during the next replenishment period, particularly in preventing child sexual exploitation, abuse, and harassment (SEA/H), and enhancing ADF’s engagement with civil society organizations (CSOs). Child SEA/H risks are present across nearly all types of AfDB- and ADF-financed projects, especially in infrastructure, education, and agriculture sectors. Addressing these risks and preventing cases of child SEA/H is critical to enabling women and girls to access development benefits on an equal basis. Engagement with CSOs has the potential to improve project quality and increase the number of affected community members accessing project benefits, enhancing development outcomes.

We understand that this has been a challenging replenishment cycle on the financing side, as donors have cut overseas development assistance budgets and shifted priorities. While ADF has sought to engage shareholders and bolster support for ADF-17, we have not seen the same outreach to civil society, which is a missed opportunity. Treating CSOs as partners in the replenishment process would reinforce ADF’s objectives and could enable CSOs to better push their governments, potentially leading to improved replenishment outcomes. While AfDB acknowledges civil society as key stakeholders in development processes, management must do more to consistently engage these groups around projects, policy reviews, and replenishment negotiations — including ADF-17. 

Integrating Child Protection into ADF-17

While ADF projects can generate major benefits — improving access to education and health services, driving economic growth, and creating jobs — children continue to remain “invisible” in many of these projects, leaving them disproportionately vulnerable to harm. ADF invests in some of the countries with the highest child SEA/H cases on the continent. The human, social, and financial costs of child SEA/H severely hamper children and adult survivors’ abilities to fully benefit from and participate in schooling, development opportunities, and employment, further constraining economic development. 

Recent AfDB and ADF projects highlight persistent gaps in child protection. In the Multi-Mano River Union Road Development Project in Liberia and the East African Coastal Corridor Development Project in Kenya, community reports linked rising cases of child SEA/H to the influx of construction workers. Similarly, The Gambia’s Rice Value Chain Transformation Program, aiming to increase agricultural productivity, was linked to increased risks of child labor, gender-based violence (GBV), and SEA/H during project implementation.

The failure to properly respond to and mitigate child SEA/H risks affects project outcomes and the reputation of the AfDB Group. Given the direct impact of AfDB and ADF projects on children, we urge the AfDB Group to take concrete steps to address child SEA/H risk across its investments. The ADF’s current replenishment presents a timely opportunity for the AfDB Group to integrate child protection into its priority commitments and to take affirmative steps to combat child SEA/H in client countries. 

BIC calls on shareholders and ADF management to reflect the following priorities in the ADF-17 policy commitments:

1. A new policy commitment on preventing child SEA/H, which requires recipient countries to adopt and implement concrete, country-level measures to prevent SEA/H in all ADF-financed projects. This commitment should build on and reinforce the AfDB’s Integrated Safeguards System (ISS) to certify that ADF systemically embeds SEA/H prevention across the project cycle. 
2. As a regional leader, AfDB should also use ADF-17 to advance systematic reforms that address the root causes of child SEA/H and strengthen a GBV service provision for victims and survivors, including children, which remains a major gap in project implementation.

Strengthening Civil Society Engagement

While the 2024-2028 AfDB CSO Engagement Action Plan is a welcome step forward, management needs to take further steps to improve the AfDB Group’s engagement with civil society, particularly those working with communities at the project level. Unfortunately, ADF and AfDB often fail to consult or engage local CSOs working in project implementation areas and connected to project-affected communities. Meaningful, ongoing consultation with CSOs — particularly those who represent the needs of marginalized groups, and those directly working with local and project-affected communities — can help identify social risks, improve project design, and promote equitable access to project benefits. 

BIC calls on shareholders and ADF management to reflect the following priorities in the ADF-17 policy commitments:

1. ADF-17 should include a policy commitment requiring AfDB and ADF staff at the country level to engage systematically with CSOs working with impacted communities throughout the project cycle. This would enable CSOs to contribute throughout project preparation, implementation, and monitoring, and align ADF practices with industry standards on transparency and inclusion. 
2. ADF-17 should commit to strengthening consultation opportunities for CSOs working with impacted communities and provide spaces of engagement during the AfDB Annual Meetings and CSO Forum.

As donors and shareholders finalize negotiations for ADF-17, the AfDB Group has a critical opportunity to strengthen its commitment to safeguarding children and deepen its engagement with civil society. Embedding concrete policy commitments on preventing child SEA/H, alongside measures to institutionalize meaningful civil society engagement, would not only protect marginalized groups and vulnerable populations, such as children, but also enhance the quality of ADF investments, maximizing the development impact of scarce ADF dollars.