News

Two senior Swiss officials from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) recently visited CORAF. The purpose of the visit was to familiarize themselves with CORAF's new strategic orientation and to identify potential areas of collaboration between the two parties.

CORAF recently adopted two new plans (Strategic Plan 2018-2027) and (Operational Plan (2018-2022), two framework documents, designed to address emerging agricultural challenges in West and Central Africa, over the next decade.

Some of the challenges included in these documents include combating youth unemployment, adapting to climate change, migration, population growth, gender and combating nutritional insecurity.

The Swiss delegation was led by Ms Elisabeth Pitteloud Alansar, Director of Cooperation at the SDC, based at the Swiss Embassy in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Mr Pascal ROUAMBA, SDC Regional Advisor for Rural Development, was also part of the delegation.

"Research centers have generated a lot of innovations and technologies without a corresponding scale-up, the next question is: how are you going to get the various innovations from research, to producers?" said Ms. Alansar during an hour-long discussion with CORAF officials at the institution's Dakar headquarters.

The SDC has a proven track record in supporting agriculture from a production point of view. Its new objective is to support the transformation of the sector.

After ten years' work on increasing agricultural productivity in West Africa, CORAF is now focusing on transforming the agricultural industry in West and Central Africa. One of its upcoming flagship programs, the West Africa Agriculture Transformation Program, has a central focus on accelerating the adoption of existing technologies and innovations to ensure food and nutrition security in the region.

As a result of the discussions, both parties agreed to focus their future collaboration on areas that are aligned with both SDC and CORAF's core priorities in the region.

Some of these areas include the promotion of youth employment, adaptation to climate change, gender and the prevention of mass migration of young people to unknown destinations.