More than 13 million people are now in desperate need of humanitarian assistance in DR Congo where violent conflicts have spread to new parts of the country.
On Friday 13 April, the international community will gather in Geneva for a DR Congo pledging conference. The Norwegian Refugee Council calls for a quadrupling of the current support, to ensure affected communities receive immediate aid.
“We cannot afford the pledging conference to be an ‘all talk and no action’ kind of event,” said the Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council Jan Egeland. “The international community needs to wake up. Today, the lack of funds is already affecting humanitarian operations. Our teams in North Kivu have seen peer agencies pulling out or scaling down, while the needs are increasing.”
“The stakes are incredibly high in DR Congo. Continued inaction would be measured in loss of civilian lives,” he added.  Last year only 56 per cent of the USD813 million humanitarian appeal was funded.

Donors to the Fund for African Private Sector Assistance (FAPA) – consisting of the African Development Bank, the Government of Japan and the Government of Austria – have approved three catalytic projects totaling USD 2.48 million  to stimulate the growth of Africa’s small and medium enterprises.
These grants will help strengthen the participation of Africa’s SMEs in financial markets and the agriculture sector.
“These three projects are well aligned with FAPA’s core mandate of supporting private-sector development in Africa, a key strategic priority of the African Development Bank. They augur well for job creation in Africa,” said Olivier Eweck, Director of the Syndication, Co-financing and Technical Solutions Department at the African Development Bank, and Chair of the FAPA Technical Committee.
The first project, Regional Financial Market Development Support Project (Projet d’appui au développement du marché financier regional, PADMAFIR) – a FAPA grant of USD 980,000, will contribute to the modernization of the regulatory framework to increase competitiveness and strengthen the capacity of the regulator on new products, including securitization, diaspora bonds and green bonds.
The second project is for the Promotion of Factoring in Africa, through which an investment totaling USD 500,000 is deployed to finance the capacity-building of emerging factoring firms and the development of a sustainable knowledge and learning platform. The platform will provide capital to SMEs by financing their receivables. The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) will contribute USD 450,000 towards this technical assistance project.
The third project is a grant of USD one million  for leveraging investments for fertilizer utilization amongst smallholder farmers in Africa.