On Monday, June 17, 2019, Ecowas will launch, in Lomé, Togo, with the financial support of the French Development Agency (AFD), 15 field projects resulting from a call for proposals for innovative actions published in July 2018 as part of the implementation of the regional Support Project to the Agroecological Transition in West Africa (Patae). This launching will be followed by a 4-day training sessions (18-21 June 2019) for project promoters on technical, administrative and financial management procedures for field projects of the Regional Agency for Agriculture and Food ( RAAF) to whom supervision of the implementation of the Patae project has been entrusted by the Ecowas Department of Agriculture, Environment and Water Resources.

The 15 selected field projects will receive grants from Ecowas for the implementation of innovative actions in favour of agroecological transition in the region. These projects are driven by grassroots actors and designed on the basis of partnerships among the following actors: (i) a development operator with recognised experience in supporting and advising producers, (ii) a group of producers, preferably organised into a group, cooperative, association, union or federation of groups or cooperatives recognised by the competent technical services and regulations in force in the country of origin, (iii) a national or international applied research body or (iv) an agroindustrial operator working on a contractual basis with family farms, (v) a local / territorial authority. These projects cover three major themes namely, the agroecological intensification of production within family farms, development and sustainable collective management of natural resources at the level of village lands, watersheds and irrigated perimeters, the promotion of products resulting from agroecological practices on the market.

It is expected at the end of these 5 days of training that all project promoters have a good knowledge of the administrative and financial management procedures of AFD and Ecowas applicable to projects with a good command of the terms of engagement and justification of the expenses required for activities execution. Project promoters must also have a good knowledge of the content and delivery deadlines for the various activity reports and the schedule of the monitoring-evaluation / communication-visibility system. Finally, they must have a good knowledge of the collaboration and relationships to be developed with the national correspondents of the Patae Project Coordination Unit.

To recall, the Patae project is co-financed by AFD and Ecowas for a total budget of 8 million, 960 thousand Euros for a four-year implementation period (2018-2021) and covers Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire and Togo. It is implemented by a consortium constituted by Agronomists and Veterinarians Without Borders - AVSF, Iram and Inades Formation International under the supervision of RAAF. The general objective of the Patae project is to improve the performance of family farms for food security, increased incomes and better resilience to climate change while promoting processes for preservation and restoration of cultivated and natural ecosystems.

With these 15 new field projects, RAAF now has a total of 58 field projects selected through six calls for proposals for innovative actions since 2014 on diverse and varied themes such as food and nutrition security, social safety nets and agroecological transition.