From 5 to 16 November 2016, sixty people working for Fert or Fert’s professional agricultural partner organizations in five sub-Saharan African countries met in Burkina Faso for the second annual meetings of the TransFert program initiated in 2015. A special moment To promote intercognition, to discover the actions of Fert in this host country and to work specifically on two themes identified as priorities by producers and teams of technicians: marketing and viability of FOs.
Coming from Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Madagascar, Tanzania and France, the technicians of Fert or its partner OPA were warmly welcomed by Burkinabe teams.
For this second edition, 17 elected representatives of producer organizations and Fert also took part in this meeting. Throughout the stay, they were able to enrich the works and debates with the testimony and their concrete contributions on the issues addressed. Despite the barrier of the language, they were able to exchange peers on their production context and their daily difficulties.
A conference focusing on post-harvest activities and commercialization took place on Friday, 11 November, with the participation of Fert’s partner organizations in Burkina Faso:
- Noufou Sankara, President of the Cooperative of Yako producers (Burkina Faso)
- Jean François Isambert, farmer, director Fert and president of AgriCord (France)
- Ando Ravoninahitra, Coordinator of Cape Malagasy (Madagascar)
- Marcel Ouedraogo, Director of Esop Siatol, transformation of soybean oil in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso)
- Stéphane Bayala, Economic Counselor at the Belgian Agri-Agency Trias (Burkina Faso)
These ten days of regrouping were the occasion:
- To discover the different actions carried out with the Burkinabe producers who are members of the departmental unions of cowpea producers; Elected officials from each of the three unions took part in all the meetings in order to give their testimony and learn about the initiatives carried out in the other countries;
- Exchange and progress in the thematic reflections identified in the TransFert program: monitoring and evaluation, viability of takeover bids, leadership training, agricultural advice, youth integration, post-harvest, access to finance and services economy … ;
- To strengthen the internal cohesion of the teams of Fert and its partners.
While many of the participants in these second meetings were present in Madagascar in 2015, this 2016 event was an opportunity to strengthen the dynamics for better exchanges and working at a distance for the benefit of the organizations of accompanied producers.
