On Thursday 19 April 2017, Entreprises Territoires et Développement hosted a delegation from Burkina Faso composed of the CPF and the NGO APME2A.

This journey was organized with the aim of discussing and sharing with ETD and OADEL stakeholders, the lessons learned on the mechanisms put in place in favor of public procurement and to better understand possible alliances with local communities and the Government in terms of valuing local resources for local economic development.

The Burkina Faso delegation was made up of 04 people, including two from the CPF (Confédération Paysanne du Faso) and two from APME2A (Agency for the Promotion of Small and Medium Agribusiness Enterprises).

The meeting started at 15:00 in the ETD meeting room. It was the second part of the visit of the delegation of Burkina Faso, the first were the visit of ESOP Rice Notsè in the morning.

The delegation of Burkina Faso was led by Mr. Jacob KIEMA, a member of the Faso Farmers’ Confederation (CPF). She was welcomed by three ETD members, including the SME and TPE Support Officer.

The meeting began with mutual presentations during which each one presented its structure of origin and its axes of intervention. Questions were asked by both sides to allow each other to be mutually enriching with this sharing of experiences. The various points discussed were those of the experiments carried out within the framework of the institutional control of the local products and those concerning the operation, the points of blockage and the factors of success of the three structures. Topics related to strategy and communication activities were also discussed.

However, it has to be said that the primary mission of the Burkinabe delegation were not really reached. Indeed, discussions showed that in terms of institutional command chain, Burkina was far more advanced than Togo.

In the last two years, various measures were taken by the Government of Burkina Faso to promote institutional purchases of local products. This is particularly the case for the circular letter issued at the end of 2016 to encourage administrations to consume local products during the organization of events. We can also quote the decree of 31 January 2017 on “the purchase of local food by state structures as part of their supply”. In addition, the supply of local products (Eg: cowpea and rice) is needed for the supply of school canteens in Burkina. Efforts remain to be made, but such provisions are undeniably conducive to the flow of Burkinabé agricultural products.

Competition is one of the first obstacles to family farming products. Added to this are the difficulties related to production.

Therefore, in a context where the Togolese economy is largely based on agriculture, would not it be time to follow in the footsteps of colleagues from Burkina to promote local agricultural products and improve the conditions of farmers?