Mali

• Pro­duc­tive agri­cul­ture and a dynam­ic pri­vate sec­tor to com­bat pover­ty in rur­al areas and to devel­op employ­ment for young peo­ple and women; and
• Voca­tion­al train­ing and socio-eco­nom­ic inte­gra­tion for young peo­ple and women.

The exten­sion of the ICPIII has led to bud­get increas­es from Lux­em­bourg of EUR15 mil­lion, plus a com­mit­ment by the Malian state to finalise the hydro-agri­cul­tur­al devel­op­ment work cov­er­ing 510 hectares in the West San plain (Ségou region). Long-stand­ing invest­ment by Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion on this plain should, in the long term, make it pos­si­ble to increase the avail­able agri­cul­tur­al land of more than 1,900 farm­ers and food and nutri­tion­al secu­ri­ty for near­ly 9,500 beneficiaries. 

In the Gao region in the north of Mali, Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion has sup­port­ed the mar­ket gar­den pro­duc­ers of Tacha­rane to devel­op a mini bore­hole equipped with a solar pump, a pip­ing net­work and a stor­age and sale unit. Hav­ing sub­se­quent­ly ben­e­fit­ed from voca­tion­al train­ing cours­es, the pro­duc­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion was able to sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve its yields and today pro­vides appren­tice­ships to young mar­ket gardeners. 

Thanks to Luxembourg’s finan­cial sup­port, in April 2019UN Women launched a sim­ple tai­lored plat­form to boost the mar­ket­ing of agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts pro­duced by rur­al women. 

Fur­ther­more, Lux­em­bourg act­ed as coor­di­na­tor of the tech­ni­cal and finan­cial part­ners in the voca­tion­al train­ing sec­tor in Mali. In this con­text, Jean-Claude Sidibé, Mali’s Min­is­ter of Employ­ment and Voca­tion­al Train­ing, vis­it­ed Lux­em­bourg on 10 and 11 Octo­ber to learn more about Luxembourg’s voca­tion­al train­ing sys­tem and its entre­pre­neur­ship train­ing for young peo­ple. He vis­it­ed the Agence de Trans­fert de Tech­nolo­gie Finan­cière/​House of Train­ing, the build­ing sec­tor train­ing insti­tute in Bet­tem­bourg, the Lycée Tech­nique du Cen­tre and the Tal­en­tHub at the Lycée Tech­nique des Arts et Métiers. The estab­lish­ment of pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships was also a focus of dis­cus­sions dur­ing the visit. 

In order to improve the employ­a­bil­i­ty of young peo­ple and their incomes and to pro­mote the cre­ation and man­age­ment of micro and small enter­pris­es in rur­al areas, in 2019 the Inter­na­tion­al Labour Office (ILO), through financ­ing from Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion, deliv­ered capac­i­ty-build­ing in entre­pre­neur­ship for 45 senior employ­ees of nation­al employ­ment pro­mo­tion agen­cies. 203 micro-entre­pre­neurs also strength­ened their capac­i­ties in entre­pre­neur­ship and 1,281 young micro-entre­pre­neurs were sup­port­ed by the GERME (‘Gérez Mieux Votre Entre­prise’ — Man­age Your Enter­prise Bet­ter) network.

Final­ly, eight Lux­em­bour­gish NGOs (the Lux­em­bourg Red Cross, ECPAT, Fon­da­tion Raoul Follereau, Hand­i­cap Inter­na­tion­al, SOS Vil­lages d’Enfants, Fon­da­tion Partage, SOS Faim and Car­i­tas) have run projects in 2019 in Mali in the sec­tors of health, water and san­i­ta­tion, edu­ca­tion and voca­tion­al train­ing, rur­al and agri­cul­tur­al devel­op­ment, emer­gency aid and the elim­i­na­tion of vio­lence against women.