Interview With M. Musa Mbenga, Executive Secretary of CILSS and M. Yamar Mbodj, Advisor on Food Security.

What is CILSS?

Musa Mbenga: The CILSS is a French acronym for Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (Comité permanent Inter-Etats de Lutte contre la Sécheresse au Sahel) . It is a regional organization made up of nine countries: Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Chad, The Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal. It was created in 1973 to help the countries of the Sahel affected by major drought to fight against the drought and mitigate its effects and to help with the emergency food distributions. After this emergency crisis, the CILSS became more involved in sustainable development work, particularly on food security and natural resources management.

The CILSS is governed by the National Council of Ministers who meets every year. Every three years, the Heads of State hold a summit. CILSS headquarters are in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, where are its two major policy programmes: one on food security and another one on natural resources management. CILSS has also two specialized institutions: the Regional Agrhymet Centre in Niamey in the Republic of Niger, involved with the Major Technical Programmes on Training and Information. The second specialized institution, the "Institut du Sahel" based in Bamako, works on research on agro socio-economic, population and development issues. In each of the nine member countries, Permanent Secretaries are responsible for coordinating activities of national CILSS committees (CONACILSS - Permanent Secretaries of the National CILSS Committees).

What is CILSS' main focus today?

Musa Mbenga: Today our main focus is on food security and natural resources management. CILSS policy programmes aim to help the countries to formulate policies and strategies which increase the earning capacity of farmers and rural people and help them to produce more or get easier access to food. On the other hand, we try to help the countries to adopt strategies that rationalize the use of natural resources on a sustainable basis. We work on local governance of natural resources and on decentralization, and we work with NGOs and CSOs who all participate in the decision making process for the use of natural resources.

What is the Sahel 21 Process?

Musa Mbenga: With the support of its partners who were brought together within the Club of Sahel, CILSS has contributed, to the emergence of a Sahelian consciousness. It has invested in the mobilization of public development aid for its member states. Thus, it has allowed the realization of a set of substantial national and regional programmes on food security and the fight against desertification. However, in spite of significant progress, sahelian countries remain subject to serious deficits: the impact of desertification persists, sahelian populations are still struggling to escape poverty and food security, the economies of sahelian countries are improving, but remain fragile and have not diversified much. This is why CILSS, and in particular its central group, was entrusted by the Council of Ministers, during its 30th annual session in Nouakchott in April 1995, with the mandate of organizing a reflection process on the Sahel in the 21st Century. This reflection process was named the Sahel 21 Process (Processus Sahel 21).

Yamar Mbodj: In the face of the often catastrophic presentation of the future of Africa, Sahel 21 has the ambition of freeing the voices and intelligence of sahelians, and to enable them to respond to the challenges and opportunities of the future. It has the objectives of provoking the emergence of a true sahelian vision of current dynamics and future priorities, to share and construct with friends of the Sahel. Sahel 21 is not therefore an academic visionary prospective, but a process of discussion during which sahelians have an opportunity to express and define their ambitions and priorities for the future, and to participate effectively in the implementation of necessary action.

This process was initiated by a lightweight regional coordination mechanism and supervised by a pilot committee. In the first phase, a "National Sahel 21 Committee" was put in place in each country, with the principle groups in society. National notes and regional synthesises were elaborated and discussed in a decentralized manner with the diverse social groups. The Forum of sahelian societies in Banjul, which was held from 4 to 12 September 1997, brought together nearly 500 representatives from sahelian societies in all their diversity, who discussed a summary of their work to submit to Heads of State and to cooperation partners. At the same time they also expressed their vision of the future and their priorities which were ensuing and the ways to meet these.

The second phase of the Sahel 21 exercise followed the same dynamic of discussion and reflection. However the goal this time was to directly influence development policies in order that they better reflect the clear priorities of the vision of Sahel 21, while progressively addressing the weaknesses in the system of analysis and the discussion and suggestions that were put in place during the first phase. The ambition is thus to pass clear priorities, in this vision, and practical action responding to these priorities, by fitting into existing national and regional dynamics. In this perspective, each country has created a national programme for priority intervention, in line with the framework proposed by the regional Coordination for the Sahel 21 Process.

What has happened since?

Yamar Mbodj: The detailed reflections were already incorporated during the first phase and in the discussions of the second phase on the development, constraints and opportunities of intervention in rural areas. They notably form the content of a "Framework strategy for sustainable food security for fighting poverty in the Sahel" adopted at Bamako (Republic of Mali), in November 2000. It was actually on the way to operationalization under the form of the national and regional operational strategies. The second Forum of Sahelian societies, which was also held in Bamako in November 2000, undertook the follow-up of this process. The Sahel 21 process created expectations. This was anticipated, as this was its principal objective. Sahelian societies forcefully reminded the ownership that they demonstrate, with regards to this broad process of participation and implication of populations and their organizations.

What process did you use for discussing, preparing and adopting the food security strategy?

Yamar Mbodj : The first question which arose was to identify all the actors who were interested in the question of food security strategies. The second question was concerned with the mechanisms of communication, which should have been put into place so that people could truly express their point of view. Some actors are better organized and others are less. It is important that everyone can express himself or herself. It is therefore necessary to reinforce the associations so that they are capable of organizing in their own way a process of consultation. This method of communicating takes a lot of time. It is important to be patient, to be capable of listening and understanding that these actors want to express themselves and to know that their points of view will be included in the synthesis documents. It is necessary to inform the countries about the process of consultation to see to it that these sahelian society forums truly reflect the expression of the country. The terms of reference on the process have been send to each country where they have been analyzed and amended. Each group of actors is included in the national plan. Farmers, entrepreneurs from the agro-food sector, women, youth, NGOs, parliamentary groups, each group of actors received specific support (consultation for the writing and synthesis) with terms of reference aimed at reporting the point of view which is expressed and guaranteeing that the process takes place in a truly transparent manner. At the same time, at the regional level, the pilot committee has been following the whole process, especially at each stage in the countries as a way of identifying the countries that are encountering difficulties. Countries such as Chad and Guinea-Bissau have had more difficulties on average, and here it was necessary to provide assistance with the creation of more organized groups for the consultations.

What was the duration of the process?

Yamar Mbodj : The elaboration of the strategic framework took two years and the elaboration of the national strategies took two and a half years. The groups of actors did not advance in the same way in all the countries.

What are the next steps?

Yamar Mbodj : Each country is equipped with its strategy for food security. Now it is a question of working on implementing it. In the implementation phase, we have distinguished between the mechanisms needed for the national plans and the mechanisms needed for the regional plan. The national strategies and programmes should above all start by mobilizing available resources at the national level. By contrast, the regional strategy should work on mechanisms at the regional level notably at the level of CILSS.

What are the principle difficulties you have encountered?

Musa Mbenga: It has been difficult to work with the private sector. We discussed this issue at the IFAD Annual Assembly meetings. It was pointed out that we need to include the private sector, but the private sector has not fully participated in the dialogue process. With the civil society organizations, when they are already organized at the national level, it is an advantage. However sometimes this can be an inconvenience, because there is then a risk of capture by the leaders of civil society organizations who can present their own opinions above the real reports from the discussions.

A second difficulty is: how to accompany without suffocating, how to give a helping hand to the discussions, the organization, .... but in a way that will not undermine their independence.

The third difficulty: How to inform the actors about the process? This is not always evident. We often come with an enormous amount of information to give. The selection of this information needs to be agreed upon and the information needs to be simplified without distorting the content. Moreover, particularly when we work with actors such as agricultural producers, it is necessary to avoid diverting them from their own activities. It is necessary to bring them into a process of consultation but we should avoid creating one rule for every time.