La Boucle du Mouhoun, North and Sahel: Job-creating territories

Project

Occupational training and integration
Health

Crédit : Expertise France — Credit: Expertise France

Project start date: September 18 2019

Status
Closed
Project end date: May 31 2022
Financing amount (Euro): 5 M €
Country and region: Burkina Faso

In northern Burkina Faso, Expertise France is assisting local authorities and civil society organisations with training and supporting young people and women towards employment.

Since the end of 2015, populations in the northern areas of Burkina Faso have been faced with growing insecurity and a large social crisis. By creating economic activities and supporting the development of key sectors of the economy, the project aims to improve living conditions for people by offering them long-term prospects.

This project follows on from the Employment Support Programme in Border and Peripheral Areas, funded by the European Union and implemented from 2017 to 2020.

Improving the employability of young people and women

Vocational training plays a major role in the social stability of a country. It provides the people who are trained with the opportunity of integrating the labour market or developing their own activity. It is thereby an appropriate response both to the issues encountered by local economies and the expectations of a number of young people seeking economic and social integration. In the rural areas of Burkina Faso, which are often far from the capitals of provinces and/or regions, vocational training programmes are scarce, relatively unknown and not always suited to the targeted publics.

Vocational training and support for entrepreneurship are flexible solutions to set up. They can:

• Have a rapid impact on the economic situation of beneficiaries;

• Restore confidence to part of the population that is neglected;

• Support the dynamics of local economic development, which are undermined by various threats.

Vocational training leading to a qualification and tailored to local economic needs is thus offered to young people and women in the 3 regions.

Renforcer l’employabilité des jeunes et des femmes

Financing activities led by local stakeholders

Local authorities and locally established civil society organisations (CSOs) are best placed to identify the activities to implement to meet local needs.

Expertise France has selected 15 projects led by these local stakeholders to receive a grant. The funded activities involve training young people and women and/or helping them set up businesses in high-potential economic sectors in their territory.

The Expertise France project team provides technical and financial assistance to these 15 partners throughout the implementation of the projects, and will evaluate the outcomes of the activities.

Supporting local authorities

The guiding principle of the project’s operational rationale is a territorial approach to local economic development. Building on the good results achieved by the European employment support programme, Expertise France is financing activities led by local stakeholders and is providing public authorities with ongoing assistance and support for their role in steering local economic development. All the activities implemented are based on close cooperation with the relevant public authorities (municipalities and regional councils). They contribute to joint learning and an extensive skills transfer, in particular through learning by doing and the evaluation of the activities implemented.