The renewed five-year framework marks a second phase of cooperation to advance cross-border humanitarian, development, resilience, and regional integration efforts across the IGAD Member states.
Action for the Needy in Ethiopia / Action for the Needy in Africa (ANE/ANA) is pleased to announce the establishment of a renewed partnership framework with the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) through a new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) covering the period 03 March 2026 to 03 March 2031. This important regional framework marks a significant step forward in strengthening collaboration to advance coordinated, cross-border, and corridor-based humanitarian, development, resilience, and mobility governance efforts across the IGAD region.
The new framework builds on the progress of earlier cooperation and is designed to consolidate past gains, address operational and governance gaps, and strengthen alignment with IGAD’s strategic priorities for 2026–2030 and ANE/ANA’s institutional transformation and regional engagement agenda. It recognizes that the IGAD region continues to face interconnected challenges driven by conflict, displacement, climate shocks, and mixed migration, and that these require integrated solutions that combine humanitarian assistance, protection, resilience building, and inclusive recovery across strategic border corridors and transboundary areas.
Under the Memorandum of Understanding, IGAD and ANE/ANA will work together to operationalize coordinated regional action across IGAD Member States, with a focus on translating regional priorities and policy frameworks into practical, results-based delivery on the ground. The framework places particular emphasis on strengthening integrated approaches along high-risk border corridors, mobilizing resources jointly, improving accountability and learning, and ensuring that joint work plans reflect regional commitments related to peace and security, resilience and climate adaptation, mobility governance and displacement solutions, social development, and institutional strengthening.
The agreed priority areas of collaboration are broad and strategic. They include cross-border resilience and climate adaptation; disaster risk management, humanitarian preparedness, and crisis response; mobility governance, mixed migration, refugee protection, and durable solutions; peace, security, social cohesion, and human security in borderlands; inclusive basic services and human development in fragile and displacement-affected settings; gender equality, Women, Peace and Security, youth engagement, and safeguarding; evidence, knowledge management, digitalization, monitoring, and learning; regional economic cooperation and borderlands development; and institutional strengthening, localization, and capacity development.
A particularly important feature of the framework is its explicit provision for stronger country-level and regional facilitation. The MoU states that joint activities may be coordinated with relevant national authorities and, where applicable, IGAD Heads of Mission and IGAD country liaison arrangements. It further provides that IGAD will facilitate engagement with Member States, including through Heads of Mission and national focal points, to support operational access, coordination, and regulatory compliance for joint initiatives. Subject to IGAD procedures and available resources, the framework also provides for support to ANE/ANA’s liaison arrangements at the Secretariat and access to appropriate coordination platforms to enable effective start-up and implementation of joint initiatives.
This partnership reflects a shared commitment to advancing regional resilience, supporting vulnerable and displacement-affected populations, and strengthening locally led and regionally coordinated responses in some of the most fragile and underserved contexts in the East Africa region. It also reinforces the importance of strategic collaboration between regional institutions and indigenous humanitarian and development actors in addressing cross-border challenges with practical, inclusive, and sustainable solutions.
Through this framework, ANE/ANA looks forward to deepening its engagement with IGAD, Member States, and other partners to contribute to peace, prosperity, regional integration, and improved outcomes for vulnerable communities across the region.
