ECOWAS and NourDign, together to bring dignity to women in Africa
Written by Ms. Maria Luisa Spagnol
Translated by Miss Ilaria Giunti
June 2015
The problem of immigration become more important because of the inundated refugees disembarking. It seems that Europe is not able to properly respond: it is clear that we could not only welcome this unregulated migration unconditionally.
We can respond to the dishonesty of politicians and the dark forces of organised crime for the cormorant management with concrete and effective actions as those for the developments on the ground. There are many international cooperation projects, such as the NourDign, which attracted strong support by the ADA, and the ECOWAS association. ECOWAS is fully managed by IDA, a project which deal with socio-economic problems and aim to preserve the independence and the dignity of the women from African, not turning the project in a banal alms “to come clean” but guaranteeing in any case the opportunities also for the Italian investors. 16 West African States join to ECOWAS, founded in 1964 by the former President of Liberia Mr. William Tubman, who had formulated this project.
To guarantee the success of this project, first of all, it is required a predisposition for a comprehensive and complex strategy to carry out the needs of the local population in order to ameliorate their quality of life. . Subsequently we have to focus on the transfer of knowledge and on the training of workers through coordinate actions and active involvement by the local institutions and active bodies of the society, such as the banks for the credit supply.
A successful cooperation project is not limited to provide an instrument, a material good such as a machinery. The way to success is actually in the transfer of method, knowledge, the mentality of consolidated techniques of the European cooperative which cannot happen unless we bring a local teaching category, whilst respecting local popular traditions and what history has taught. The first pilot projects, in progress in Ivory Coast and in Senegal, are focusing on the transformation process of manioc, mango, cashew, peanut and sunflower without forgetting the development of the breeding industry approach to reduce the dependence of these States from the import of meat and related products.
Nourdign is one of the these pilot projects that envisages supplying machineries and materials, servicing, a specific training path, from teachers to local technicians. Nevertheless, the viability of these projects cannot be conceived without a market analysis, the carrying out of the local population needs, partner search and the choice of the supplier group. The evoked draft provides for an employment promise to two / three women, who will alternate in eight-hours shifts, for all the five production units, in order to guarantee in this way an income which could be used for at least ten / fifteen households.
The cooperation projects, such as that which we are referring, are one of the possible ways to respond to the actual problem of migration.
SOURCES :
- http://www.ecowas.int/
- http://www.nourdign.org/invest_italian-version.html
NOTES :
- ECOWAS – Economic Community of West African States
- CEDEAO (in French) – Communauté économique des États de l’Afrique de l’Ouest
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