Mali

In view of the wor­ry­ing human­i­tar­i­an sit­u­a­tion and in order to ensure the con­ti­nu­ity of Luxembourg’s long-stand­ing com­mit­ments in Mali, in 2022 Lux­em­bourg extend­ed its exist­ing tran­si­tion strat­e­gy in order to con­tin­ue to offer oppor­tu­ni­ties to the pop­u­la­tion. With the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion sched­uled for March 2024 and the prospect of a return to a con­sti­tu­tion­al sys­tem, an exten­sion of the tran­si­tion strat­e­gy, cov­er­ing the peri­od from 1 Jan­u­ary 2023 to 31 Decem­ber 2024, was grant­ed in August 2022. This will involve the exten­sion of bilat­er­al pro­grammes in the fields of train­ing and labour mar­ket inte­gra­tion, rur­al devel­op­ment and food secu­ri­ty as well as strength­en­ing the resilience of rur­al communities.

The rur­al devel­op­ment pro­gramme main­ly inter­venes in the prof­itable rice, fonio and sesame indus­tries by increas­ing their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, sus­tain­abil­i­ty and prof­itabil­i­ty, in order to sus­tain­ably boost sources of income and food secu­ri­ty for those liv­ing in Mali. In the field of train­ing and inte­gra­tion into the job mar­ket, the Lux­em­bourg Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion seeks to broad­en the range of high-qual­i­ty voca­tion­al train­ing on offer to enable young peo­ple and women to acquire skills that are suit­ed to the employ­ment mar­ket and thus to pro­mote their access to income-gen­er­at­ing activ­i­ties. In total, 2 148 young peo­ple from fam­i­ly farms have been iden­ti­fied and con­sti­tute the pri­ma­ry tar­get group for the receipt of advice from the inte­gra­tion sup­port structures.

The sup­port pro­gramme in agro-pas­toral sec­tors in the regions of Ségou and Sikas­so, financed joint­ly with Switzer­land with a bud­get of EUR16 mil­lion, is designed to help increase the incomes of fam­i­ly agro-pas­toral farms active in the local milk and pota­to sec­tors, by improv­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and employ­a­bil­i­ty and by bring­ing togeth­er oper­a­tors from the pub­lic sec­tor, the pri­vate sec­tor and civ­il society.

With­in the frame­work of mul­ti­lat­er­al coop­er­a­tion, Lux­em­bourg sup­ports the ​“Mali Youth Entre­pre­neur­ship” pro­gramme imple­ment­ed by the Unit­ed Nations Devel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP) (2021−2023, EUR2.25 mil­lion), which aims to train 10000 young peo­ple in entre­pre­neur­ship and to sup­port them to set up their busi­ness­es. The imple­men­ta­tion of the UNDP sup­port pro­gramme for reforms and elec­tions in Mali (2021−2023, EUR200000) con­tin­ued in 2022.

In response to the grow­ing human­i­tar­i­an needs in Mali, Lux­em­bourg con­tributed EUR3 571215 to the human­i­tar­i­an activ­i­ties of its part­ners in the coun­try in 2022, in par­tic­u­lar by pro­vid­ing sup­port to ICRC human­i­tar­i­an oper­a­tions in Mali, the World Food Programme’s (WFP) ​“School feed­ing” and ​“UN Human­i­tar­i­an Air Ser­vice” (UNHAS) pro­grammes, as well as the oper­a­tions of the Bel­gian Doc­tors of the World organ­i­sa­tion in Mali.

Final­ly, six Lux­em­bour­gish NGOs (Car­i­tas, the Lux­em­bourg Red Cross, Brid­der­lech Dee­len Foun­da­tion, Fon­da­tion Raoul Follereau, Hand­i­cap Inter­na­tion­al and SOS Faim) have run projects in 2022 in Mali in the sec­tors of water and san­i­ta­tion, edu­ca­tion and voca­tion­al train­ing, rur­al and agri­cul­tur­al devel­op­ment and the elim­i­na­tion of vio­lence against women.