LED - GUINEA

completed

The main objective of the Guinea Local Economic Development Project (" The Project") is to improve the business practices of local businesses, with a specific focus on women/youth-owned entities, to increase their access to new market opportunities within and beyond the supply chain of mining projects in Guinea. The Project will also strengthen local capacity and contribute to the improvement of governance at sector level so that local businesses can capture significant benefits from mining while local institutions leverage the presence of mining projects to catalyze local economic development. The Guinea LED Project is implemented with strong World Bank Group service integration and collaboration with development partners in the country. The Project will cover 3 main components: Component 1- Local Content Development: Enhance opportunities for local businesses to participate in the supply chains of global firms by improving local procurement policies, access to information, access to finance along with improving local firm capacity to meet standards and international requirements; Component 2 – Local Economic Development: Increase local economic opportunities, improve capacity and ability of formal and informal businesses, with a focus on women and youth organizations. This will enable them to operate more efficiently and improve their living standards while facilitating their access to finance and helping them adopt sustainable practices and management skills on agricultural production and other non-farm value chains outside of the mining supply chain to contribute to the resilience of host communities; Component 3 – Institutional capacity building: Strengthen the capacity of relevant local and sector institutions, community stakeholders and project implementation partners and networks to improve their engagement on local content and economic development and increase the participation of women in local development planning and management. It will also support and promote good governance, stakeholder engagement and coordination on sustainable and inclusive local economic development. Cross-cutting themes such as gender, youth inclusion, governance and environment are vital to the achievement of the objectives of the Project. The IFC Guinea LED project addresses them in various ways in the project design and will track and report to its Management and Global Affairs Canada outputs and outcomes delivered on these themes during project implementation.