Niger

The 12^th part­ner­ship com­mit­tee meet­ing was held on 18 Octo­ber 2019 in Niamey, co-chaired by Min­is­ter Lenert. This forum, ded­i­cat­ed to dia­logue between the two coun­tries’ author­i­ties, made it pos­si­ble to take stock of bilat­er­al coop­er­a­tion. Despite the wors­en­ing secu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion in the Sahel and in Niger in par­tic­u­lar and its impli­ca­tions in terms of devel­op­ment coop­er­a­tion, the imple­men­ta­tion of the var­i­ous Lux­em­bour­gish devel­op­ment pro­grammes has been achieved with­out inci­dent. On the basis of the encour­ag­ing results observed dur­ing the 2018/2019 finan­cial year, bud­get increas­es of EUR6.86 mil­lion and EUR3.19 mil­lion respec­tive­ly have been con­firmed in the sec­tors of water and san­i­ta­tion and rur­al devel­op­ment. In addi­tion, a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing with a val­ue of EUR1.46 mil­lion has been signed for a project to sup­port the pub­lic spend­ing chain. The total bud­get increas­es grant­ed in 2019 with­in the ICPIII thus amount to EUR11.5 million.

In the water and san­i­ta­tion sec­tor, where Lux­em­bourg acts as lead part­ner of the tech­ni­cal and finan­cial part­ners in Niger, a del­e­gat­ed coop­er­a­tion agree­ment with a val­ue of EUR15 mil­lion was signed with the Nether­lands on 12 Novem­ber 2019. The lat­ter is in addi­tion to the del­e­gat­ed coop­er­a­tion agree­ment signed with Den­mark in Decem­ber 2017, with a val­ue of EUR26 mil­lion, as well as an EU con­tri­bu­tion as part of the Sahel Alliance amount­ing to EUR8 mil­lion, illus­trat­ing the con­fi­dence of the oth­er donors with regard to Luxembourg’s com­mit­ment and pro­fes­sion­al­ism in a sec­tor that is vital for Niger and its population. 

With­in the frame­work of mul­ti­lat­er­al coop­er­a­tion, Lux­em­bourg has con­tin­ued its sup­port to the Unit­ed Nations Pop­u­la­tion Fund (UNF­PA) for a pro­gramme to sup­port the inte­gra­tion of rights, the health of ado­les­cents and coun­ter­ing demo­graph­ic growth (Illim­in pro­gramme) and launched a new pro­gramme with the Unit­ed Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) with the aim of bet­ter nutri­tion for new-borns dur­ing their first 1,000 days.

Again under the ICPIII, Lux­em­bourg con­tin­ued its finan­cial sup­port to the joint donors’ fund to the Niger state nation­al mech­a­nism for the pre­ven­tion and man­age­ment of food crises (DNPG­CA).

Adopt­ing its glob­al, inte­grat­ed and con­sis­tent ​‘3D’ approach, Lux­em­bourg has sup­port­ed the Euro­pean Union’s civil­ian mis­sion ​‘EUCAPSAHEL Niger’, based in Niamey and Agadez and aim­ing to build capac­i­ty for com­bat­ing ter­ror­ism and organ­ised crime among the var­i­ous secu­ri­ty forces. Since 2013 Lux­em­bourg has been fund­ing four projects for defence and secu­ri­ty forces in Niger. The fifth project, with a val­ue of EUR767,000, con­sists of sup­port­ing the acqui­si­tion of 32 con­tain­er mod­ules in order to upgrade the check posts in the zones for access to and exit from the cap­i­tal as well as in some towns in the regions of Agadez, Tahoua and Zin­der, and the acqui­si­tion of an off-road vehi­cle spe­cial­ly equipped for desert missions. 

In 2019, sev­en Lux­em­bour­gish NGOs, cur­rent­ly work­ing under a mul­ti­an­nu­al frame­work agree­ment with the MFA with a bud­get of EUR6.8 mil­lion, were imple­ment­ing devel­op­ment projects in Niger. In addi­tion, four Lux­em­bour­gish NGOs were imple­ment­ing human­i­tar­i­an projects.

Final­ly, Lux­em­bourg par­tic­i­pat­ed in the African Union sum­mit held in Niamey from 7 to 8 July. In this con­text the Embassy’s office has financed many micro-projects, in par­tic­u­lar through coop­er­a­tion with the Fon­da­tion Tat­tali Iyali; this project has con­tributed to tree-plant­i­ng in the city of Niamey, and an exhi­bi­tion of the trea­sures of Niger has been organised.