First meeting between the representatives of the beneficiary countries of the RICOWAS project

As a prelude to the official launch of the RICOWAS project, the representatives of the 13 beneficiary countries started this morning in Bamako a 2-day working meeting, during which the philosophy and the approach of the initiative were recalled as well as the lessons learned from the previous implementation phases of the SRI approach, which will be scaled up. The meeting started with the intervention of Mr. Modibo SYLLA, Director General of the Institute of Rural Economy (IER) of Mali, who welcomed all the participants on behalf of H.E. Mr. Modibo KEITA, Minister of Rural Development of Mali

The "Scaling up climate-resilient rice cultivation in West Africa (RICOWAS)" project is financed by the Adaptation Fund (AF) and implemented by the Sahara and Sahel Observatory (OSS) in collaboration with the Regional Center of Specialization on Rice, hosted by the Institut d'Économie Rurale du Mali (CRS-Riz/IER), the West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF) and Cornell University. Its global budget is around 14M USD and will last for 4years.

Group work allowed countries to understand the details of the work plan for the first year of implementation. They led to recommendations on the institutional arrangement definition of the project, on the clarification of the roles and responsibilities of the various entities as well as on the selection criteria of the intervention sites and the beneficiaries. They also made it possible to explore synergies with existing projects and to emphasize the importance of the bottom-up approach in the execution of activities at the community level.