The World Bank recently approved a $570 million food system resilience program (FSRP) for several West African countries, including Togo. The program will be implemented in multiple phases. 

The first phase, which amounts to $330 million, will cover Togo, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and involve three regional organizations - the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS), and the West and Central Africa Council for Agriculture Research and Development (CORAF).

According to the World Bank, that phase will focus on implementing a “broad program that will simultaneously increase agricultural productivity through climate-smart agriculture, promote intraregional value chains and trade, and build regional capacity to manage agricultural risk.”

“Food crisis prevention and management are best achieved at a regional level to mitigate, diversify, and transfer production risks and allow for economies of scale. This program enables greater cooperation to ensure food security, now and into the future, for the benefits of the populations in ECOWAS,” said Jean Claude Kassi Brou, President of the ECOWAS Commission.

Overall, the FSRP should be based on the World Bank’s projections, directly impacting four million people - farmers (women and youth especially), small producers and processors, as well as small and medium-sized agricultural businesses.

Ayi Renaud Dossavi

Togo received 336,000 more doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccines from the US last Sunday. The batch, supplied under the COVAX initiative, brings to 1,245,090 the total number of vaccine doses that Washington has offered Lomé so far.

This is the fourth batch coming to the United States. It will help Togo accelerate its Covid vaccination campaign (started on March 10, 2021).

It is worth recalling that the parking lot of the US embassy in Togo currently serves as a vaccination centre; it will stay so until December 16, 2021.

According to data recently disclosed by Togolese health authorities, Togo has over a million doses of Covid-19 vaccines in stock. Also, the country, according to the Financial Times, has already vaccinated more than 4.9% of its population.

 Esaïe Edoh

In Togo, the fund set up by the executive to support municipalities’ budget, will soon have a technical secretariat for its management committee. In this framework, a draft decree was examined, and adopted, by the Council of Ministers, in a meeting held late last week. 

According to the official communiqué of the council, setting up a technical secretariat should help local authorities better implement the projects financed by the fund. "Also, the activities of this secretariat will help evaluate the impact of efforts made by the government and its partners relative to the financing and development of local authorities," TogoFirst learned.

Regarding the fund’s distribution criteria, there are four basic ones, knowingly: uniformity of the status of the target municipality, its population size, the surface area it covers and its poverty index. It should be emphasized that the fund has been endowed with a budget of CFA6.25 billion for 2021.

Klétus Situ

Togo will need about CFA30 billion for its road maintenance projects next year. The projection was made by experts last Thursday, during a meeting held in Lomé and gathering representatives from the ministry of public works, road maintenance services, and the SAFER (Société Autonome de Financement de l'Entretien Routier). The meeting was aimed at elaborating a draft program budget for 2022.

In detail, SAFER hopes to secure CFA24 billion next year to rehabilitate roads and rural tracks, leaving a CFA6 billion deficit. "CFA24 billion were provided for 2022, based on projections. Of these CFA24 billion, 30% or CFA7.2 billion,  will be allocated to the Ministry of Accessibility and Rural Roads. The road network covers the national roads inland, paved roads, and rural tracks," said Togloh Komlan Edoh, Director of Road Maintenance.

Another 30% of these expected revenues will go to the office in charge of opening up rural areas and rural roads. "16.8 billion will remain to enable us to maintain the national road network, and cover part of the needs estimated at CFA30 billion," the director concluded.

It should be recalled that in 2020, it had been estimated that Togo would need CFA38.6 billion to maintain its roads.

This campaign, according to the tax administration, will allow it to draw up a tax map of the territory through the recording, processing and aggregation of the data collected which will be stored in a database.

According to the OTR, besides data collection, "such censuses are interesting for economic operators because they contribute to the development of their environment”.

All companies and entrepreneurs involved in public projects or who supply goods or services are called to get registered. Census agents have been deployed all over the country to this end.

The OTR indicated that the census is carried out in collaboration with local municipal authorities.

Esaïe Edoh

Actors of decentralized finance systems (DFS) took part last week in a two-day workshop on anti-laundering. The meeting which closed on Friday was organized by Expertise France and the Togolese cell that handles financial information (CENTIF-Togo).

Around 40 representatives from local DFS attended the meeting. They were trained by two experts who came from Benin and Senegal.

According to the CENTIF, microfinance institutions, both in Togo and the ECOWAS in general, are especially exposed to the laundering threat because they are poorly informed about their obligations regarding anti-laundering.

"SFDs are particularly exposed to the risks of money laundering and terrorist financing, as indicated by the national risk assessments and mutual evaluations conducted by the Intergovernmental Action Group against Money Laundering in West Africa (GIABA)," said El Hadj Tchaa Bignossi Zakari Aquitème, representing the Togolese Ministry of Economy and Finance, at the opening ceremony.

Togo is the fourth country in the region to host this workshop. Benin, Senegal, and Ivory Coast preceded it. The training session is part of a project named "Organised crime: West African Response to Money Laundering and the Financing of Terrorism (OCWAR-M)". The latter is financed by the European Union.

"OCWAR-M has a budget of about 4,430 million CFA francs (6.75 million euros), for a duration of 47 months, going from March 2019 to January 2023," commented Dr Piero Valabrega, program officer of the Delegation of the European Union in Togo.

The Golfe 1 municipality of Lomé needs CFA6.725 billion for its development over the 2022-2026 period. The figure is written in the municipality’s development strategy (PDC) which was presented last Wednesday to technical and financial partners as well as the civil society.

The PDC focuses on helping the youth and women become financially self-reliant. It also contains infrastructure projects and projects aimed at providing basic social services that will be accessible to all.

Joseph Gomado, mayor of Golfe 1, said the strategy would help “ensure a shared local governance in a peaceful and socially cohesive environment”. He added that the document would also foster the reinforcement of sectors that are key to the municipality’s sustainable economic development. “This PDC paves the way for concerted and coherent actions that will benefit the population”.

Golfe 1, one of the municipalities of the Grand Lomé autonomous district (DAGL), is in Lomé. It spans over 6,06 km2 and has 500,000 inhabitants, according to the DAGL’s estimates. 

Esaïe Edoh