Editorial – December 2022
Dear Madam, Sir, dear members, dear partners,
I would like to use this opportunity of this final editorial of the year to take a look back at the tenth Operational Steering Committee (OSC) which brought together, on 7 December under the chairmanship of Ousmane Diagana, Vice President for West and Central Africa of the World Bank, more than 80 people in Brussels and 80 participants online. We would like to thank you for this strong mobilisation of members, the G5 Sahel Executive Secretariat, the Coalition for the Sahel, the G5 Sahel countries and partner organisations, which bears witness to the great vitality of our governance bodies.
The exchanges focused on the evolution of the Sahelian contexts, the implementation of the Alliance’s actions on the ground and the presentation of the conclusions of the independent review announced during the previous committee in June in Bonn. This first edition concluded with a panel discussion on the theme “Women and resilience in the Sahel” which provided a sounding board for committed representatives of civil society.
This 10th OSC also marked the accession of the West African Development Bank as the 27th member of the Alliance, to whom we extend a warm welcome! This membership of the BOAD will allow the Bank to provide its regional expertise and its contribution to a more coordinated, joint and adapted response to the needs and challenges of the G5 Sahel countries.
The conclusions of the Steering Committee, which I invite you to view on our website, will contribute starting the first months of 2023 to improving the way we operate and proposing new approaches. The recommendations of the independent review of the Sahel Alliance will be formalised for adoption in the coming weeks, after consultation with the members. Their aim will be to prioritise, in each G5 country, an action focused on the “blind spots” of aid coordination for which the Sahel Alliance brings recognised added value, such as the integrated territorial approach. An action plan will set out their implementation and structure all our work with particular consideration given to operational coordination on the ground.
The year 2023 will begin under the sign of accountability, as the OSC has validated the structure and timetable of the Sahel Alliance’s 5-year results report, the work on which has just been launched. This collective effort, which unites all Alliance members, reflects our commitment to a framework of reciprocal accountability, agreed with our partners, on shared objectives. This report will shed light on the impact of aid coordination in the Sahel since the inception of the Alliance and the results achieved in improving the living conditions of the region’s populations.
I have retained from the rich exchanges of this committee a common ambition. That of understanding, within the framework of a closer dialogue with all partner actors, the determining factors of the security, humanitarian and development trajectories of the various territories and of acting together to address the root causes of the factors of fragility or instability. The rapidly changing context and the repeated warnings about the humanitarian situation, particularly food insecurity, in some areas coerces us and questions our agility to constantly adapt our responses to deal with the urgency of crises while helping to build the foundations of sustainable economic and social development paths. We cannot allow peace and prosperity to drift further away from populations that have suffered for too long.
It is with the firm motivation to work alongside you to make this ambition a reality in 2023 that I send you, on behalf of the entire UCA team, our best wishes for the New Year.
Sincerely,
Emmanuel Debroise
