In Togo, the council of the Entente will fund the installation of individual solar kits in 14 villages in Kara, the Savanes and the central region. The project, thanks to which electricity will be provided to about 1,000 households, falls within the framework of the Off-grid energy sources’ promotion initiated by the council.

In the framework of that promotion, it has already provided financial support to Togolese utility company Agence Togolaise de l’Electrification Rurale et des Energies Renouvelables (AT2ER), for the distribution of solar kits to 350 rural households.

“Our commitment to the development of the off-grid is being embodied here in Togo (…) and we are pursuing its development in Togo and in the other member countries of this organization,” said Patrice Kwamé, executive secretary of the Council of the Entente.

Let’s note that Togo is planning on providing electricity access to 2 million people with the installation of domestic solar kits, thus increasing the rural electrification rate (currently at 8%) to 50% in 2022 and 100% in 2030.

Ayi Renaud Dossavi

Togo’s Agricultural Financing Incentive Mechanism (MIFA) is expecting to mobilize XOF7 billion by the end of the year to support 95,000 agricultural and financial players in the country. The project is expected to have an impact on 130,000 agricultural jobs, MIFA said.

To date, the institution has already mobilized more than half of its objective (about XOF 3.8 billion in the form of credit, between August and September 2019, for the benefit of 52,000 stakeholders impacting 86,000 jobs). Funds mainly went to the marketing of inputs, as well as soya and rice sectors (the three sub-sectors captured 80% of the credits granted, at the end of September 2019).

Mifa welcomes the interest of agricultural players vis-a-vis its support. Between January and September 2019, the institution spent about XOF45 billion on more than 500 projects.

Let’s note that financial support for the Togolese agricultural project in 2017 represented only 0.2% of banks' portfolio while the sector contributes 40% of the country’s GDP.

Ayi Renaud Dossavi

In 2017, the five most paid taxes (out of 20) were VAT, customs duties, corporate tax, excise duties, and personal income tax, according to a recent World Bank study. These taxes represented 88.5% of all tax income collected by the country over the period.

In detail, VAT contributed 43.1% of the revenues, while customs duties, corporate tax, excise duties, and personal income tax respectively represented 16.6%, 11.4%, 6.6%, and 6.4%.

The sixth-largest source of tax income is registration duties which contributed 2.6% of these revenues.

Other taxes paid are payroll taxes (0.7% of tax revenues), turnover taxes (0.7%), diverse tax income (0.5%), tax on gambling (0.3%), and the built property tax (0.2%). The single business tax (SBT), which became patent this year, represented only 0.1% of tax revenues.

Ayi Renaud Dossavi

Togo's new mining strategy should soon be validated. Last Thursday, a validation session for the document was indeed held in Adetikope, in the Agoè Nyivé prefecture.

This initiative falls under the Mining Governance and Development Project (PDGM). It also aims at providing the mining industry with a "means to record more efficient performances and better implement its programs," says Marcel Sogle, Director of the Mines and Geology Office.

Mining contributes 22% of Togo's exports and up to 3.7% of its GDP, according to the latest estimates.

Six higher education institutions in Togo and Senegal will benefit from the expertise of four European Universities in strengthening their engineering training to reach the global engineering standards. The six African Universities were selected via the European Erasmus Program.

In Togo, beneficiaries include the University of Lomé (with the Crossroad for Innovation and Business), and the Institute of Applied Modern Technology. Senegal is represented by the Cheikh Anta Diop University, Gaston Berger University, the Catholic University of West Africa (UCAO), and the Polytechnic School of Thiès.

The project, presented during the celebration of the Erasmus Day on October 11, is part of the program for the Appropriation of International Standards for the Structuring of Engineering Education in West Africa (ASICAO), launched six months ago in Lomé. ASICAO aims to help the countries of the sub-region to get qualified human resources that meet international standards in this field. Specifically, the objective is “to offer students the best possible quality of engineering training and to forge international inter-university partnerships for perfectly balanced student exchanges in terms of academic mobility,” according to Timothée Toury, the project’s coordinator.

Erasmus is a program that enables experience sharing between universities, major European Universities, and educational institutions throughout the world. The initiative, which makes it possible to offer capacity-building opportunities to these actors, is one of the tools of European higher education.

Ayi Renaud Dossavi

The European Union's Program of Consolidation of the State and the Associate World (Pro-CEMA), just backed about 30 civil society organizations with a financing of XOF665 million. The monies should help these organizations improve their actions on the field. The related agreement was signed last Wednesday in Lomé.

Overall, 32 projects will benefit from the funds. They will help associated organizations reinforce their capacities in terms of equity, gender and culture.

Let's indicate that these projects were picked "out of 132 applications sent" through a strict process, said Moussa Bah, project leader at Pro-CEMA. However, "fifty organizations obtained the required score to benefit from the funding," but finally only 30 were picked due to the funds' size.

According to the project leader, the performance shows the strong dynamism of Togolese civil society organizations which "can secure more than the 700 million they had been recently granted."

Ayi Renaud Dossavi

Various representatives of the fishery sectors of ECOWAS member-States (directors of fishery and non-public actors), and Mauritania, gathered on October 9, 2019, to discuss the implementation of a joint policy for fishing and aquaculture in West Africa.

Organized by the ECOWAS Agriculture and Rural Development Directorate (DADR), the meeting falls under the Project to Improve Regional Governance of Fishery in West Africa (PESCAO); and aims to put in place "a framework for the 15 countries so that they agree on how to sustainably develop fishery and aquaculture in West Africa," said the head of Pescao project.

Let's note that the fishery sector employs about three million people in West Africa (more than 10% of the region's active population), with an annual output of 3 million tons.
In Togo, the sector contributes 4.5% of agricultural GDP.

Last Wednesday, the Togolese government adopted at a ministers' council a bill enabling the ratification of the African Union Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data adopted in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea.

Togo, by ratifying the convention aims to tackle issues closely related to technological innovation and more specifically to the boom of the digital industry. According to the ministers' council, "this should add to efforts made by the government in the same framework. Indeed, authorities placed the digital sector at the heart of the national development plan (PND). The ratification should in effect improve upon the country's institutional and legal frameworks, but also help Togo better cooperate with other countries, in relation to electronic transactions, promotion of cybersecurity and fighting cybercrime."

Let's recall that in March this year, Togo reached an agreement with Asseco, a Polish IT security company, to launch Cyber Defense Africa, a cybersecurity agency. This was on the sidelines of the African CEO Forum held in Kigali.

In the same vein, the country plans to create its national cybersecurity agency and put in place a Cybersecurity Support Fund, a Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) and Security Operating Center (SOC).

Séna Akoda

"African economies suffer...backlashes of the current global difficult times and this translates into a moderate growth across the whole region." These are words spoken by Cameroonian Albert Zeufack, chief economist of World Bank for Africa, to sum up the 20th Africa's Pulse half-year report focused on Africa's economic situation.

In 2019, sub-Saharan African economies should grow by 2.6% against 2.5% last year. This is 0.2 percentage points lower than the forecast made last April. The slow performance, World Bank says, is due to a not-so-impressive recovery of Africa's three mastodons, Nigeria, Angola, and South Africa. Indeed, while the oil sector in the first two lacks sufficient dynamism, investors shun the last according to the Bretton Woods Institution. The latter believes the slow recovery of these three economies should, alone, hamper economic growth across the whole sub-Saharan region, despite improvements in many other countries such as Togo.

Regarding the latter (Togo), the IMF has, last month, once more scaled up its growth forecast for the West African economy for the year, putting it at 5.3%. In the medium term, the institution is more optimistic than the World Bank, in a context where Togo's public debt is falling and where the government recently launched its national development plan which extends to 2022.