The “Strengthening resilience” project community-based agroforestry households (RESICOM)” is being implemented in the Nord, Boucle du Mouhoun and Centre-Nord regions. Agroforestry households (hosts and IDPs), young people and women are the targets of this project run by the Solidar Suisse and SOS Sahel International Burkina Faso consortium. Every quarter, the consortium and its implementing partners (OCADES-Dédougou and FEPAB-Yatenga) meet to assess the level of implementation of activities and propose solutions to boost performance. They have sacrificed themselves to tradition for the2nd time in 2023. The meeting was held in Koudougou on September 22, 2023 and aimed to take stock of the recommendations from the last meeting, exchange views on achievements, examine strategies for boosting performance by the end of 2023, lessons learned in 2023 and look ahead to the4th quarter.
All RESICOM project activities carried out since the last meeting in May 2023 were reviewed at this second quarterly meeting of the year 2023. But before that, the state of implementation of the recommendations from the last meeting was presented, and all the partners are unanimous that all the recommendations from the first quarterly meeting have been carried out. The Solidar Suisse and SOS Sahel International Burkina Faso consortium is implementing RESICOM project activities in the field in synergy with OCADES Caritas Dédougou and the Ouahigouya-based section of the Fédération des Professionnels Agricoles du Burkina (FEPAB). Most of the activities are running smoothly, with a very satisfactory completion rate. For the period from January1 to June 30 2023, the financial execution rate is 56%. However, implementation of some activities is behind schedule, given the security situation in the project’s areas of intervention.
Activities with a good level of realization
Among the activities satisfactorily implemented in the field are those relating to the early recovery of internally displaced people and the very poor (providing these targets with animals for fattening and sheep fattening). The same applies to vocational training for young people and women, as well as the provision of kits for fattening, market gardening and seedling production, the provision of IGA kits for women beneficiaries, and the provision of production equipment for cooperatives. Other equally important activities are progressing satisfactorily. These include land reclamation actions seen technically from the angle of Water and Soil Conservation/Soil Defense and Restoration (CES/DRS), and the construction of runoff collection basins (BCER) for supplementary irrigation, market gardening and fish farming.
Activities experiencing implementation difficulties
The security context does not always facilitate the implementation of certain activities. These include the materialization of grazing zones and transhumance corridors, the setting up of service hubs and warrantage stores, as well as activities under Outcome 3 of the project dealing with issues of peace, social cohesion and local governance, due to difficulties in setting up certain consultation bodies (local peace committees, CCFV, CCVR). Nevertheless, our teams are adapting in the field to implement RESICOM project activities. These activities can be reoriented as needed to reinforce the project’s performance in the last quarter of 2023. The lessons learned from the implementation of the various activities were also discussed, as were the prospects for the project to achieve a very high level of execution by the end of the year.
