Roundtable Global Alliance for Resilience Initiative – Sahel – West Africa

13 juin 2013. European Commission, Brussels. Global Alliance for Resilience Initiative (AGIR) – Sahel – West Africa Roundtable on sustainable agriculture as a means of increasing resilience: the vision of West-African farmers. 

This roundtable is part of a process initiated in December 2012 that will lead to the definition of concrete actions in favour of resilience in the countries involved in the AGIR initiative, of concerted actions driven by the various States, civil society as well as technical and financial partners before the end of 2013.

The Resilience Initiative is an opportunity to accelerate the coordinated implementation of a series of tools essential to sustainable food and nutrition security in West Africa. This also represents an opportunity to include food and nutrition security in the 11th FED (Federation for sustainable development) program currently under negotiation.

More specifically, it must contribute to the debate on a sustainable increase in food production, by collecting the regional main farmer organizations’ positions, within a multi-stakeholder discussion framework aimed at finding sustainable structural solutions to prevent food and nutritional crises. The discussion is based on existing initiatives coordinated by ECOWAS, UEMOA and the technical branch of CILSS.

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AGIR Regional Roadmap April 2013 This roadmap provides a Regional Guidance Framework setting forth the overall objectives of the Alliance for Global Resilience (AGIR) - Sahel and West Africa. It will serve as the basis for formulating national resilience priorities (through inclusive dialogue, building on existing and planned policies and programmes). These national priorities will also include operational frameworks for funding, implementation, monitoring and assessment.

What is the AGIR-Sahel Alliance and what are its objectives?

The EU-led Global Alliance for Resilience Initiative (AGIR) was officially launched on 6 December 2012 in Ouagadougou and is shaping up to be a major long term strategy for building resilience in the fragile Sahel region. In response to the chronic food insecurity in the Sahel, the Alliance's objective is to promote greater resilience by creating synergies between the emergency response and long-term development strategies.

The AGIR-Sahel partnership, gathering representatives from over 30 countries, several humanitarian agencies and UN agencies, and organisations such as the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and two regional organisations (ECOWAS and UEMOA), sets out a roadmap to create seasonal social safety nets to strengthen the resilience of the most vulnerable who have too long been the victims of chronic malnutrition. The building of these targeted seasonal safety nets involve cash transfers to the poorest during the lean period, but it also foresee investment in healthcare and social sectors, investment in agriculture, women empowerment, use of private sector expertise, etc.

The AGIR-Sahel will focus on a ‘Zero Hunger’ goal in the next 20 years through 4 strategic pillars:

1. Pillar 1 Restoring and strengthening the livelihoods and social protection of the most vulnerable populations;
2. Pillar 2 Strengthening health and nutrition, e.g. via programs which facilitate access to basic social services;
3. Pillar 3 Increasing food production, the incomes of vulnerable households and their access to food in a sustainable manner;
4. Pillar 4 Strengthening governance in food and nutritional security with, among others, a focus on strengthening early warning and information systems.