Niger

This is a forum ded­i­cat­ed to dia­logue between the two coun­tries, which also facil­i­tates the exam­i­na­tion of the state of play in devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion inter­ven­tions. In 2021, devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion rela­tions were gov­erned by the third Indica­tive Coop­er­a­tion Pro­gramme (ICP III), signed on 26 Sep­tem­ber 2015. Ini­tial­ly cov­er­ing the peri­od 2016 – 2020, it was extend­ed until 31 Decem­ber 2021. In addi­tion, the pro­grammes for edu­ca­tion and teach­ing, train­ing and voca­tion­al inte­gra­tion, sup­port for sus­tain­able agri­cul­tur­al devel­op­ment and capac­i­ty-build­ing of the actors in the pub­lic expen­di­ture chain have been extend­ed until 30 June 2022, with­out any bud­getary impli­ca­tions, to enable these pro­grammes to be closed in an order­ly way and the new ones to be launched. Hav­ing had an ini­tial indica­tive finan­cial enve­lope of EUR 67 mil­lion, ICP III’s total indica­tive bud­get was EUR 118 mil­lion in 2021, demon­strat­ing the dynamism of Lux­em­bourg Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion in Niger, which remains the part­ner coun­try with the largest finan­cial enve­lope. ICP III focus­es on (i) basic edu­ca­tion and tech­ni­cal and voca­tion­al train­ing, (ii) water and san­i­ta­tion, (iii) sus­tain­able agri­cul­tur­al devel­op­ment and (iv) pub­lic finance. The bilat­er­al inter­ven­tions in these areas are imple­ment­ed by LuxDev, the Lux­em­bourg agency for devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion. Despite the wors­en­ing secu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion in the Sahel and in Niger in par­tic­u­lar and its impli­ca­tions in terms of devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion, the imple­men­ta­tion of the var­i­ous Lux­em­bourg devel­op­ment pro­grammes has con­tin­ued with­out incident.

Lux­em­bourg Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion with­in the frame­work of ICP III has led to vis­i­ble results: in the water and san­i­ta­tion sec­tor, since 2016 Lux­em­bourg has been imple­ment­ing a mul­ti-donor pro­gramme with a bud­get of approx­i­mate­ly EUR 85 mil­lion (includ­ing EUR 42 mil­lion from Lux­em­bourg), which has con­tributed to the con­struc­tion of 160 drink­ing water sup­ply sys­tems, cor­re­spond­ing to 57000 new­ly-served house­holds. 300 pub­lic latrines have been installed in schools, health cen­tres and pub­lic places. In addi­tion, 100 cement­ed wells and 20 rur­al pump­ing sta­tions have been built. These achieve­ments have been accom­pa­nied by social medi­a­tion, lead­ing to the sign­ing of 110 social agree­ments designed to avoid con­flicts around these new water points. Since 2005, Luxembourg’s inter­ven­tions in the edu­ca­tion sec­tor have helped to build more than 650 schools and 140 lit­er­a­cy cen­tres, pro­vid­ing 23000 ben­e­fi­cia­ries with access to lit­er­a­cy pro­grammes. In the voca­tion­al train­ing sec­tor, Lux­em­bourg Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion has strong­ly sup­port­ed the craft sec­tor in Niger and has sup­port­ed the cre­ation of 13 craft vil­lages. 17 train­ing cen­tres have been built and 171 cen­tres have been pro­vid­ed with equip­ment that has been made avail­able to 38500 learn­ers across the coun­try. With­in the frame­work of sus­tain­able agri­cul­tur­al devel­op­ment, 11295 young peo­ple have been trained in the agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion and pro­cess­ing sec­tors (of whom 59% are women). The pro­gramme has also sup­port­ed 8 928 young peo­ple through agri­cul­tur­al sup­port, 6 867 pro­duc­ers (51% of whom were women) were giv­en a loan to start up an agri­cul­tur­al activ­i­ty and 7 556 hectares of degrad­ed land were recov­ered and reha­bil­i­tat­ed for the ben­e­fit of 7 700 young farm­ers (61% of whom were women). Inter­ven­tions to sup­port the pub­lic expen­di­ture chain, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Nation­al School of Admin­is­tra­tion (ENA) in Niger, have trained 240 offi­cials from the Min­istry of Finance.

As part of the work­ing vis­it to Lux­em­bourg on 19 May 2021 by Mohamed Bazoum, Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Niger, Min­is­ter Fay­ot and Min­is­ter Mas­soudou (Min­is­ter of For­eign Affairs and Coop­er­a­tion) signed the 4^th Indica­tive Coop­er­a­tion Pro­gramme (ICP IV, 2022 – 2026) between Lux­em­bourg and Niger, with an indica­tive finan­cial enve­lope of EUR 144.5 mil­lion. ICP IV thus con­firms Niger as the recip­i­ent of the largest amount of offi­cial devel­op­ment assis­tance (ODA) among Luxembourg’s part­ner coun­tries. While aim­ing for con­ti­nu­ity in terms of sec­tors of inter­ven­tion, ICP IV seeks to respond to the chang­ing con­text in Niger, par­tic­u­lar­ly in terms of the wors­en­ing secu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion and its con­se­quences at the human­i­tar­i­an lev­el. ICP IV iden­ti­fies three pri­or­i­ty areas of inter­ven­tion: the pro­vi­sion of and inclu­sive access to basic social ser­vices such as water, san­i­ta­tion, habi­tat, and food and nutri­tion secu­ri­ty; the devel­op­ment of human cap­i­tal through sup­port for edu­ca­tion, tech­ni­cal and voca­tion­al train­ing, ado­les­cent empow­er­ment and socio-eco­nom­ic inte­gra­tion; and strength­en­ing gov­er­nance, par­tic­u­lar­ly by pro­vid­ing sup­port to the capac­i­ties of pub­lic author­i­ties to enable them to pro­vide the basic social ser­vices, pub­lic finance man­age­ment and inclu­sive finance that are needed.

Fol­low­ing the work­ing vis­it by the Pres­i­dent of Niger, the 13^th part­ner­ship com­mit­tee meet­ing was held on 11 June 2021 by video-con­fer­ence, co-chaired by the Direc­tors of Coop­er­a­tion. The meet­ing pro­vid­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty to take stock of the progress of ongo­ing coop­er­a­tion pro­grammes and the areas of inter­ven­tion of the new ICP IV. The for­mu­la­tion of the new ICP IV pro­grammes was launched on 25 Novem­ber 2021 in Niamey. In order to apply the lessons learned in imple­ment­ing the cur­rent ICP, the part­ners decid­ed to extend most of the cur­rent pro­grammes until June 2022, with­out any bud­get increase. At the end of 2021, the finan­cial exe­cu­tion of ICP III was close to 100%, high­light­ing the smooth run­ning of Lux­em­bourg Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion pro­grammes in Niger and the effi­cien­cy of the sec­toral approach, which pro­motes align­ment with and use of nation­al sys­tems, and thus own­er­ship and capacity-building.

In the frame­work of mul­ti­lat­er­al coop­er­a­tion, under ICP III from 2016 to 2021 Lux­em­bourg sup­port­ed two pro­grammes imple­ment­ed by UN agen­cies with a total bud­get of EUR 11.75 mil­lion. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Health, the EUR 5 mil­lion part­ner­ship between the Unit­ed Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and Lux­em­bourg sup­ports the nation­al nutri­tion secu­ri­ty strat­e­gy. The pro­gramme of sup­port for the inte­gra­tion of ado­les­cent girls’ rights and health, and the con­trol of pop­u­la­tion growth, into poli­cies and pro­grammes (“Illim­in” project), with a bud­get of EUR 6.7 mil­lion, is imple­ment­ed by the Unit­ed Nations Pop­u­la­tion Fund (UNF­PA).

Final­ly, in 2021, the Lux­em­bourg gov­ern­ment signed frame­work agree­ments with sev­en Lux­em­bour­gish NGOs that are active in Niger and which con­tin­ued to imple­ment their projects despite the health cri­sis, often through local part­ners. In 2021, EUR 1 419751.10 euros were imple­ment­ed in Niger by Lux­em­bour­gish NGOs.

In the con­text of a food and nutri­tion cri­sis in the Sahe­lian sub-region, Lux­em­bourg Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion has also pro­vid­ed addi­tion­al sup­port of EUR 1 mil­lion to the Nation­al Food Crises Pre­ven­tion and Man­age­ment Mech­a­nism (DNPG­CA) with the aim of meet­ing the food needs of the most vul­ner­a­ble groups and in response to the Niger government’s call for inter­na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty, bring­ing total sup­port for the mech­a­nism to EUR 5 million.