NEPAD-Spanish Women’s Fund

Proposals for project funding submitted to the NEPAD-Spanish Fund for the Empowerment of Women following the first call for applications up to the end August 2007 are currently being processed. m The second call for proposals, with an original deadline of 15 January 2008, has been postponed because of changes in the management of the Fund. Applicants will be informed in good time of the new deadline date.

Recruitment of members of the Technical Management Team (TMT) for the Fund is expected to be completed soon.

The NEPAD Secretariat would like to apologise for any inconvenience that this delay may have caused. Source : NEPAD News, marc 3, 2008

Africa’s Great Green Wall project takes step forward

A two-day international conference on the Great Green Wall project, with the support of the Africa Union, NEPAD and the Community of Sahel-Saharan States (COMESSA), was opened by the President of Senegal, Abdoulaye Wade, in Saly, Senegal, on 12 February 2008.

It brought together experts and academics from the region, ministers from countries interested in the project, representatives from the African Union, NEPAD and partners including the World Bank, the African Development Bank and the European Union, among others.

The Great Green Wall was first suggested by then President Obasandjo of Nigeria at the 7th ordinary session of Heads of States of COMESSA held in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in June 2005.

The African Union adopted the project at the Summit of Heads of State and Government held on 29-30 January 2007 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The idea is to establish a 15km wide and 7,000km long Great Green Wall across Africa from Dakar in Senegal to Djibouti, as a significant component of the NEPAD Environment Action Plan.

It is perceived as a strip of multi-species vegetation crossing Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti.

The expected effects are :

reduction of soil erosion ; restructuring of degraded soil ; reforestation in the countries that are crossed by the wall ; revival, development and diversification of agriculture and cattle breeding ; restoration, conservation and appreciation of biodiversity. The meeting in Saly addressed such issues as defining the parameters of the Great Green Wall’s layout — and presenting the project to partners.

President Wade said he did not want to focus on the costs of the project, but said the villages that are crossed by this important project must be real project managers, must become owners of the project and invest in carrying it through.

At a round-table session of the partners President Wade called on them for advice especially with regard to the project’s methodological approach.

All partners showed keen interest in the project and asked for the institutional framework to be specified.Source : NEPAD News, marc 3, 2008

Strong support for NEPAD Fish programme

Because of the critical importance of fisheries and aquaculture for the food security of more than 200-million Africans, the Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Co-operation (CTA) has decided to support the NEPAD Fish programme.

The CTA is a joint body of the European Union and the African, Caribbean and Pacific group (ACP).

More than 200-million people in Africa rely on fish as an essential part of their diet. The sector also provides incomes for over 10-million families engaged in fishing, processing and marketing.

The sector is moving rapidly, with aquaculture growing exponentially in a number of countries and fisheries changing their production and marketing strategies in response to the rising demand for fish and new constraints in resource access and productivity.

In spite of its importance and the highly visible changes, there is little understanding of how information in the sector is generated and exchanged, and on what basis economic decisions are made. There is a need to identify the constraints that exist for improving knowledge generation, exchange and application.

The NEPAD Fish programme, in collaboration with the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture, seeks to improve the understanding of the innovation system in the fisheries and aquaculture sector.

The output from the research will advise policy-makers in a number of pilot countries how to target investments in science, technology and innovation, as well as in more effective training. Source : NEPAD News, marc 3, 2008