By Bakary Touray Jnr.
The Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel, better known as CILSS, in partnership with the Gambia’s Nema Project under the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), has concluded a three-day regional assessment retreat in Banjul.
The forum aims to assess and revive the level of the implementation of Environmental and Social Management Plan (ESMP), with a view to boost and cruising efforts for effective implementation.
The interface brought together participants from Mali, Niger, Chad, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Mauritania and The Gambia, among other CILLS Member States. They comprised experts in the areas of infrastructure and the Environment, from the right project components.
It also aims to update the roadmap, share experiences and draw lesson for improving the project implementation. The regional workshop was attended by eight countries in West Africa which are part of the Building Resilience Against Food and Nutrition Insecurity in the Sahel (P2RS) project.
The Deputy Permanent Secretary (DPS) at the Ministry of Agriculture, Mr. Musa Huma, has earlier informed the participants that, the forum would share experiences and draw lessons for proper implementation of the project; that the experts gathered there would reflect directly on the performance of the project.
He pointed out that the overall objective of the workshop was to take stock of infrastructures built since the start of the project and difficulties encountered in order to identify appropriate solutions.
DPS Huma continued that, the forum would also address the project’s prospects and logical framework on preparation for its formulation; a proposed strategic and recommendations on investment prospects.
As the project is about to close in 2020, he reasoned, they deemed it necessary to scale up information and measures on the completion of the project.
According to DPS Huma, the experts directly involved in the financial management, and the value chain development experts, have been attending this review workshop since 2018, and as such, the need for their participation was unanimously approved by all participants in the regional technical workshop of P2RS coordinations held in March 2018 in Bamako, Mali.
He disclosed that the meeting suggested to the various national coordination to include the participation costs of the afore-cited experts, in their budget because the project performance directly depends on their activities.
He underlined the workshop participants considered that the experts are better positioned to address issues relating to the procedure and to propose appropriate solution based on the lesson learned.
