SolArid Steering Committee to launch e-forums

19 March, 2007

SolArid is the GM’s South-to-south cooperation programme, which brings together the countries of the Sahel and the Sahara. It works to highlight the country-specific characteristics to be taken into account by the international community when developing strategies to combat desertification and poverty and promotes the exchange of experiences on resource mobilization strategies, brokers financial partnering strategies and fosters partnerships.

The GM convened a SolArid Steering Committee on 16 March, during CRIC.5 with the aim of discussing the implementation of the 2007 Work Programme agreed upon at the previous meeting in December 2006, in Rome. The Focal Points of Morocco, Mali, and Niger attended.

The Committee agreed to launch e-forums to support the exchange of information and lessons learnt, following the successful launch of a similar forum on the GM’s Gender Programme. The idea is for each SolArid country to chose a representative experience from their national context, to share and discuss with all SolArid member countries. The experiences identified so far are:

Mali: decentralization and natural resource management
Morocco: integrated rural development and natural resource management
Tunisia: integrating the NAP into the national economic and social development framework
Niger: synergies between the three conventions.

These e-forums will be launched by the GM in April and May 2007. More information will be posted soon.

For further information, please contact:

Mr Youssef Brahimi, Pogramme Coordinator, South-to-South Cooperation, Africa
Tel: +39 06 5459 2584
y.brahimi (at) ifad.org