The West Africa Food System Resilience Programme (FSRP) held its first wrap up meeting of the  support missions for 2024. The event took place from 15 to 17 May in Lomé, Togo. More than 70 participants from Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Sierra Leone, Senegal and Togo, as well as regional institutions (CILSS, CORAF and ECOWAS) and the World Bank, took stock of the implementation of the Programme in line with its implementation principles.

During three days of discussions, the participants shared information on the various activities carried out over the last six months at national and regional levels, while reviewing the challenges linked to the implementation of the FSRP before proposing possible solutions to meet these challenges.

Work focused on (i) parallel sessions between countries and regional organisations on specific topics relating to digital services, integrated landscape management, strengthening regional trade and agricultural markets, the rice value chain and gender; (ii) plenary sessions to review common challenges and propose solutions that could contribute to the successful implementation of the PRSP.

One of the innovations at this regional meeting was the exhibition of products and innovations by Togo's stakeholders and beneficiaries. Some twenty producers from Togo's main agricultural production zones shared the products generated with the support of the FSRP.

This first wrap-up meeting of the FSRP support missions for 2024 was a platform for promoting knowledge sharing, strengthening coordination between the players and defining the strategic directions for the future of the programme, given that the first phase countries (Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Togo) are halfway through the implementation of their activities.

In the field, FSRP's activities focus primarily on preventing and managing agricultural and food crises, strengthening the resilience of agro-sylvo-pastoral production systems, and facilitating trade in agricultural goods and inputs within and across national borders in West Africa. After two years of implementation, significant results have been noted and the actions carried out in the countries and at regional level have reached a total of 1,281,766 direct beneficiaries in 2023, 37% of whom are women.

At the opening ceremony, representatives of the World Bank, CILSS, CORAF, ECOWAS and Togo's Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Rural Development praised the progress made by the FSRP, which bears witness to collective efforts to strengthen the resilience of the food system in our region, with tangible results in the countries and at regional level.

Overall, we note that FSRP is a unique tool that strengthens regional integration through the exchange of technologies and innovations and the mobility of researchers and stakeholders between countries, which will contribute considerably to the implementation of ECOWAP and thus accelerate the transformation of the agricultural sector in the sub-region.

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