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Fruit Fly

Activities Conducted in 2008

In July 2008, under the aegis of the ECOWAS Commissioner for Agriculture and Mali's Minister of the Environment, 15 ECOWAS member states met in Bamako, Mali to discuss and validate a scoping study on fruit fly financed by the European Commission.  The EC-funded scoping study (English, French) proposed a concerted regional action plan for the management of fruit fly in West Africa accompanied by an appropriate phyto-sanitary response to control the pest. 

Following the validation of the EC-funded scoping study, ECOWAS and its member States noted several shortcomings that impeded the implementation of the Regional Action Plan:  

1. The separation between national and regional actions was only briefly outlined and the distinctions between different actions was not crystallized;

2. A fully fledged logical framework had yet to be put in place;

3. The costing of the study was not carried out. The study outlined a set of recommended actions at national and regional level but fell short of identifying a project document with an accompanying detailed budget; and

4. The institutional set-up required to implement the action plan at both national and regional level was not fleshed out. To the extent that this work might be replicated in other African regions, it is important that a clear management structure needs to be defined to implement and monitor progress of the regional and national action plan.

In October 2008, the STDF organized an informal meeting with West African delegates present at the SPS Committee as well as representatives from ECOWAS,  WAEMU/UEMOA, FAO, UNCTAD and World Bank to discuss actions to be undertaken in preparation of the stakeholder meeting. Issues such as the importance of a creation of national committees to oversee fruit fly control activities, expanding the Action Plan to other countries in the region and forthcoming technical assistance activities were discussed.

To counter the shortcomings identified above, the World Bank (using funds from the EC AII ACP Agricultural Commodities Program) and the STDF jointly commissioned COLEACP to conduct a follow-up exercise to complete the EC study with a proposed budget and institutional set-up, in order to outline a comprehensive project document for the control of fruit fly in West Africa.  The work by COLEACP and its team of consultants was conducted in June and July 2009 in close collaboration with ECOWAS. 

The COLEACP report was the main document presented during a donor workshop organized by the STDF and ECOWAS in collaboration with the Government of Mali, in Bamako, Mali on 29-30 September 2009.

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Site Last Updated in October, 2009