Burkina Faso

The ICP III has an indica­tive fund­ing enve­lope of EUR 88.5 mil­lion and focus­es on the sec­tors of (i) sus­tain­able man­age­ment of nat­ur­al resources, (ii) edu­ca­tion, teach­ing and tech­ni­cal and voca­tion­al train­ing and, (iii) infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies (ICT). The inter­ven­tions in these fields have been imple­ment­ed by LuxDev, Luxembourg’s devel­op­ment agency. In addi­tion, for the 2016 – 2022 peri­od the NGO SOS Faim Lux­em­bourg has been giv­en a remit to act in the area of rur­al micro­fi­nance. In con­nec­tion with a new project to sup­port Burk­i­na Faso’s tax reg­is­ter, a fea­si­bil­i­ty study was pro­duced and shared with the Direc­torate for Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion and Human­i­tar­i­an Affairs in late 2019.

The ICP III makes pro­vi­sion for part­ner­ship com­mit­tees to be held annu­al­ly. These are forums ded­i­cat­ed to dia­logue between the two coun­tries, which also facil­i­tate the exam­i­na­tion of the state of play in devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion rela­tions. The 11^th part­ner­ship com­mit­tee was held on 21 Octo­ber 2019 in Oua­gadougou and was co-chaired by Min­is­ter Lenert. This enabled the bilat­er­al pro­grammes cur­rent­ly in progress to be reviewed. As the part­ner­ship com­mit­tee was tak­ing place, two bilat­er­al mem­o­ran­da of under­stand­ing were signed off, to the val­ue of EUR 19.2 mil­lion, on new projects to sup­port Burk­i­na Faso. They includ­ed EUR 13 mil­lion in the fields of edu­ca­tion and voca­tion­al train­ing – Sup­port for the sec­toral pol­i­cy on teach­ing and tech­ni­cal and voca­tion­al train­ing and an increase in bud­get of EUR 6.2 mil­lion for the sup­port pro­gramme for imple­men­ta­tion of the Sec­toral Plan for Edu­ca­tion and Train­ing. In addi­tion, an exten­sion of 18 months was rat­i­fied for the pro­gramme to sup­port the devel­op­ment of ICT in Burk­i­na Faso.

Dur­ing her work­ing vis­it to Burk­i­na Faso, Min­is­ter Lenert gave the open­ing address at the fourth edi­tion of African Micro­fi­nance Week, attend­ed by over 800 par­tic­i­pants. She also took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to vis­it some projects financed by Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion and had a bilat­er­al dis­cus­sion with Roch Marc Kaboré, the pres­i­dent of Burk­i­na Faso, Christophe Dabiré, the Prime Min­is­ter, and her coun­ter­part, Las­sané Kaboré, the Min­is­ter of the Econ­o­my, Finance and Development.

Mul­ti­lat­er­al­ly, in 2019 Luxembourg’s devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion con­tin­ued its sup­port in the areas of local gov­er­nance and youth entre­pre­neur­ship through a project imple­ment­ed by the Unit­ed Nations Devel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP). Two oth­er mul­ti­lat­er­al stake­hold­ers also con­tin­ued to ben­e­fit from Luxembourg’s finan­cial sup­port in 2019. These were the Unit­ed Nations Pop­u­la­tion Fund (UNF­PA) through a project to increase the inde­pen­dence and repro­duc­tive health of women and vul­ner­a­ble young peo­ple and the Unit­ed Nations Cap­i­tal Devel­op­ment Fund (UNCDF) which has deliv­ered sup­port for inno­va­tion in the area of inclu­sive dig­i­tal finance in order to sup­port the eco­nom­ic and cli­mate resilience of pop­u­la­tions. This lat­ter ele­ment is receiv­ing finan­cial assis­tance of EUR 3.2 mil­lion from the Min­istry of the Envi­ron­ment, Cli­mate and Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment for the 2019 – 2022 peri­od. In addi­tion, an inno­v­a­tive project for the shea sec­tor has been devel­oped with the nation­al unit respon­si­ble for imple­ment­ing the Enhanced Inte­grat­ed Frame­work (EIF).

Final­ly, in 2019, 15 Lux­em­bourg NGOs were active in Burk­i­na Faso, work­ing on the imple­men­ta­tion of more than 40 projects co-financed by Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion, amount­ing to a total mul­ti­an­nu­al bud­get of more than EUR 17 million.