Togo First
“One laptop per student” project extended to teachers and lecturers
In Togo, the Galilée project which aims to provide every student with a laptop has been extended to teachers and lecturers working in public and private schools (primary, secondary and tertiary education).
In detail, eligible beneficiaries will have the opportunity to get a new laptop for CFA110,000 against CFA250,000 normally. An initial payment of 50,000 CFA is to be made and the remaining amount by installments over 12 months.
NEACOM-PS is the firm responsible for supplying the laptops for the Galilée project. It should be noted that besides the laptops, beneficiaries also get an internet connection.
The project, formerly reserved for students only, is subsidized by the government. It aligns with the latter’s ambition to digitize tertiary education in line with the Bachelor-Master-Doctorate system.
Séna Akoda
Mayors attend a workshop to better manage their respective municipalities
Yesterday, Lomé hosted a workshop on the Components Needed for the Efficient Management of Municipalities. The session gathered 117 mayors from all parts of the country.
Participants will work on ways to improve the quality of their service in their respective communities. This should in the long run help them better manage State funds they receive this year.
This is in a context where a fund of about 2 billion CFA should soon be put in place for municipalities’ operations.
Through this move, the government’s objective is to establish exemplary municipalities, in terms of public resource management. It is a major and logical step in the country’s decentralization process.
The local officials at the workshop also discussed issues such as the handling of the Covid-19 crisis, lockdowns, and difficulties between mayors and county chiefs.
Municipalities to get CFA3bn support from government
The Togolese government will provide XOF3 billion to the 117 municipalities where local elections were held last year. The news was announced on Sept. 7 by the minister of decentralization and local communities, Payadowa Boukpessi, on the sidelines of a workshop for the country’s mayors.
The monies, which will be allocated through the Fonds d’Appui aux Collectivités Territoriales (Territorial Communities Support Fund or FACT), should be used for community projects, as well as cover operational expenses such as wage arrears and indemnities owed to local officials.
Out of the three billion announced, two billion will be equally split for investment purposes based on the population size and poverty level of each community targeted.
Séna Akoda
Eco: Togo is still the only ECOWAS state meeting the convergence criteria
Togo remains the only ECOWAS member state that meets the convergence criteria for the adoption of the Eco, the future single currency of the zone.
The West African country was again recognized for this achievement at the 57th ECOWAS Heads of State Summit held in Niger and attended by Togo’s President Faure Gnassingbé.
The criteria to be adopted by all 15 member states of the ECOWAS include a fiscal deficit below 3%, a 10% inflation rate, and a debt/GDP ratio of less than 70%. Among other factors considered for the implementation of the currency is the fight against insecurity and collaboration between the member countries of the community.
Almost a year ago, the Eco debate emerged within the political and intellectual sphere of the region. Since then, little progress seems to have been made. The project, it should be noted, was overshadowed by more significant macro- and micro-economic challenges (in the wake of Covid-19, which led to a withdrawal of countries into themselves, with the closure of borders, a sharp slowdown in trade, and the allocation of state resources to more urgent issues).
Ayi Renaud Dossavi
Eco: Togo is still the only ECOWAS state meeting the convergence criteria
Togo remains the only ECOWAS member state that meets the convergence criteria for the adoption of the Eco, the future single currency of the zone.
The West African country was again recognized for this achievement at the 57th ECOWAS Heads of State Summit held in Niger and attended by Togo’s President Faure Gnassingbé.
The criteria to be adopted by all 15 member states of the ECOWAS include a fiscal deficit below 3%, a 10% inflation rate, and a debt/GDP ratio of less than 70%. Among other factors considered for the implementation of the currency is the fight against insecurity and collaboration between the member countries of the community.
Almost a year ago, the Eco debate emerged within the political and intellectual sphere of the region. Since then, little progress seems to have been made. The project, it should be noted, was overshadowed by more significant macro- and micro-economic challenges (in the wake of Covid-19, which led to a withdrawal of countries into themselves, with the closure of borders, a sharp slowdown in trade, and the allocation of state resources to more urgent issues).
Ayi Renaud Dossavi
Togo looks for innovative ways to fight coastal erosion
Togo is looking for innovative solutions to protect its coasts, as part of the fight against coastal erosion and the protection of its coastline.
According to public authorities, the movement’s main objective is to have "no more construction along the coast being swallowed by the sea by June 2021." This is while waiting for the WACA program, which aims to tackle coastal erosion and sea pollution, to take over next year.
In this framework, the Togolese government recently entrusted the engineer Déo Eklu-Natey with the implementation of an emergency project to temporarily protect, if not save, all the houses on the Togolese coast that are likely to be washed away by erosion before mid-2021.
"The contract has already been signed and the engineer is currently preparing the construction sites for the effective implementation of this emergency project," said Dr. Adou Rahim Alimi, WACA's program coordinator for Togo (reported by Sputnik).
This project is expected to cost the Togolese State about 600 million FCFA, with the support of the World Bank.
The initiative, a provisional project, involves digging trenches around the previously identified infrastructures, to a depth of about two meters, to facilitate sedimentary deposition with arriving waves and increase the space separating the sea from the structures. This technique, simple and innovative, was developed by the Togolese engineer.
Ayi Renaud Dossavi
ECOWAS Heads of State meet physically in Niger, for the first time in months
The ECOWAS Heads of State met today in Niamey, Niger, for the Community’s 57th ordinary summit.
This is the first time in months that the leaders gather physically, after holding virtual meetings, due to the covid-19. During the summit, they will discuss the region’s political, economic, and security situation.
The heads of state will specially discuss the situation of Mali which was already the subject of two extraordinary summits (held by videoconference).
Another topic is the succession of Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou as the head of the ECOWAS, replacing the Ghanaian Nana Akufo-Addo.
Let’s recall that in preparation for the current summit, the ECOWAS security and mediation council met on Sept.4 2020. On this occasion, State members’ ministers of foreign affairs, including Togo’s Robert Dussey, discussed upcoming elections in Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Guinea, and Niger.
The port of Lomé is a top transshipment platform for goods transiting to Sahel countries
Besides striving to have one of Africa’s top container ports, Lomé’s port, according to recent figures, is also improving its performances relating to transit with Sahel countries.
The port of Lomé currently handles more than 2.85 million tons of goods destined to these countries. This is almost three times the volume it did in 2013 - 1.26 million tons or 60% of the infrastructure’s overall transit volumes then.
The improvement was driven mostly by activities with Burkina Faso, the leading partner of the port of Lomé. Indeed, at the end of 2019, goods transiting to Togo’s northern neighbor represented 77.7% of the port’s transit volumes (against less than 40% seven years earlier).
Moreover, after moving up and down between 2013 and 2016, transit traffic with Niger (whose main partner port is the port of Cotonou, Benin) has been rising steadily since 2017. For Mali, from 2016, more than 100,000 tons of goods have been transiting through Lomé every year (despite most of its goods passing through Dakar, Conakry, and Abidjan).
Lomé, transshipment port
The port of Lomé is above all a hub in terms of transshipping. Every year for the past four years, more than a million TEU containers are handled by the port before being sent to other ports across the region. This makes Lomé’s port the first container port in the Gulf of Guinea.
Last year, the platform recorded container traffic of 1,500,611 TEU containers and 76% of this volume was due for transshipment (compared to 34% in 2013).
According to a recent publication of Lloyd’s List, the port of Lomé is the second-best container port in sub-Saharan Africa. It comes after that of Durban in South Africa.
Fiacre E. Kakpo
The port of Lomé is the 2nd transshipment port in sub-Saharan Africa
The port of Lomé is the second container port in sub-Saharan Africa and is among the top 5 African ports in terms of transshipment. This is according to Lloyd’s List, a well-known magazine specialized in the maritime industry (in publication since 1734).
Over the past year, the port handled 1.5 million containers and on the continent, it follows Tanger Med in Morocco (first container port in Africa and 35th in the world, with 4.8 million containers handled), Port Said in Egypt (45th and 3.86 million containers), Durban in South Africa (71st and 2.76 million), and Alexandria in Egypt (90th and 1.81 million containers).
In the SSA region, behind Durban and Lomé came Mombasa in Kenya (106th in the world - 1.41 million containers), and Lagos (115th for 1.30 million containers).
The port of Lomé is thus the leading transshipment port in West Africa. This activity which represents a significant share of the infrastructure’s operations makes it a strategic hub, not only for neighboring landlocked nations but also for many others, especially those situated along the Gulf of Guinea.
Ayi Renaud Dossavi
Togo is the best FDI performer in the world, given its economy’s size
According to the 2020 Greenfield FDI Performance Index released this month, Togo is the world’s top performer in terms of foreign direct investments, with a score of 10.83 and 11 FDI projects attracted last year.
Togo “attracts more than 10 times the amount of greenfield FDI that might be expected given the size of its economy.” It thus exceeds the annual average of the performance index, despite being a newcomer in the rankings (only countries that attract 10 FDI projects or more are featured in the index).
The largest share of FDIs Togo attracted in the period under review was a double partnership inked with Africa’s richest Aliko Dangote. Signed in November 2019, the partnership covers the establishment of a $2bn phosphate fertilizer processing facility and a $60m cement factory. Another major FDI project announced in the country is the construction of the Blitta solar plant ($33.5m) by Amea Power.
This performance could be attributed to an improved business climate due to reforms introduced by the business climate cell which is headed by Sandra Ablamba Johnson, Minister Delegate, Adviser to the President of Togo.
In the rankings, after Togo, Rwanda is next with a score of 10.6. Singapore is the 10th best performer in terms of attracting FDIs.
On the other side of the coin - the 10 countries that attracted the least FDIs in 2019 given their economy’s size - Japan is first with 211 projects and Ecuador is the 10th.
Séna Akoda