Rural development is a priority in the Sahel./ Foto: AECID
Julio García. Madrid
The projects in West Africa to be prioritised for support by the Spanish Cooperation Agency (AECID, in Spanish) next year are interventions in the countries in the Sahel region, as well as those areas most affected by the Ebola virus. The National Systems for Social Protection in this African region are the ones that will receive aid from Spanish cooperation.
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), with financial support from AECID, will launch in January a call for proposals for projects aimed at the reduction of food vulnerability and related to social protection networks in the countries in West Africa.
For this call, tenders will be accepted from not for profit organisations –international and international NGOs, federations and agriculture and livestock producers, associations of rural women, etc.- as well as local administration institutions in the countries in the Sahel.
The budget earmarked for project co-financing will be of 2.2 million dollars
More specifically, this first call, open to the 15 countries that made up the ECOWAS, will prioritise interventions in Niger, Malo, Burkina Fasso and Senegal, where child malnutrition figures are higher as a consequence of recurring food crisis. Actions aimed at bettering food security in the populations most affected by the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea-Conakry.
The AECID carries out a great deal of support work for regional agricultural policy as one of their priority objectives in West Africa. The 2015 call is complementary to the support that Spain gives in the set-up of the Regional Reserve of Food Security in West Africa.
In numbers, Spanish cooperation with the ECOWAS amounts to more than 200 million euros in the last years, to support agricultural, rural development and food security and nutrition projects, as well as initiatives in infrastructures set up by the ECOWAS Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency, of migration and development and gender.
