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IFPRI WCAO welcomes a new researcher, a new

research assistant and 4 interns

IFPRI WCAO is happy to

welcome new team members.

From IFPRI headquarters and

partner institutions including

UGB, UCAD and ENSAE,

they will all be helping IFPRI to

find sustainable solutions for

ending hunger and poverty in

West and central Africa. Learn

more about them on page 5)

PRESENTATION OF THE GLOBAL FOOD POLICY REPORT IN DAKAR

29 June 2012- As part of the series of meetings entitled

“Rencontres Stratégies et développement , organized by IFPRI

WCAO in partnership with development oriented institutions in

Senegal including ANSD, DAPS, DPEE, FASEG, ISRA and IPAR,

a seminar was held on June 29th 2012 at Radisson Blu hotel in

Dakar to present IFPRI’s Global Food Policy Report . IFPRI

Director General, Dr. Shenggen presented the French version of

Global Food Report that was first launched n Washington last

January. During the event Dr. Shenggen Fan highlighted the main

features of the report, while Dr. Ousmane Badiane focused on the

African region. The Seminar was chaired by Baba Dioum, former

IFPRI trustee now general coordinator of the Conference of

Ministers of Agriculture of West and Central Africa (CMA-WCA),

discussants were officials from the ministry of agriculture and rural

equipment and the ministry of livestock. This first RSD was attended by

many IFPRI partners, ambassadors, students and the press.

WCAO? West & Central Africa Newsletter 01 •February to August 2012

WHAT’S GOING ON IN

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IFPRI opens its doors to ENSAE students

June 22, 2012- As

part of the series of

open-doors to

students, one of the

first schools targeted

by IFPI WCAO was

ENSAE (Senegal’s

national school of statistics applied to economy)

attended a presentation of IFPRI, the institution’s

mission and research tools. Presentations were made by

Dr. Ousmane Badiane, Dr. Ismael Fofana, Dr. Sunday

Odjo and research assistant Mamoudou Tankari. The

day ended with a tour of the library with a presentation

of IFPRI knowledge tools, ebrary and useful websites by

Cheikh.

SAKSS workshops held in WCAO

April and June 2012-

two capacity-

strengthening

workshops were held

in Dakar, for

attendees from 37

countries. The

workshops provided trainings on the CAADP agenda,

SAKSS concepts, monitoring and evaluation,

agricultural policy analysis and knowledge management

tools. The country SAKSS capacity needs assessment

was also launched which, will help governments and

stakeholders identify capacities, analytical tools, and

information to generate credible, timely and high quality

knowledge products to inform and guide agricultural

sector policies on planning and review processes.

Assessments for 15 countries are to be completed by the

end of September 2012.

Capacity Strengthening at DAPS

May 17, 2012 –One of IFPRI WCAO mission is to

work with local institutions, share the researcher’s

knowhow and

strengthen capacities.

This mission is well

illustrated through the

cooperation between

IFPRI and DAPS.

The first immersion

workshop was held on March 22, 2012 in the premises

of DAPS in Dakar and focused on computable general

equilibrium models.

The objective of the workshop was to introduce DAPS

managers and professionals to computable general

equilibrium modeling techniques and its use in decision

making.

A series of workshops are being led by Ismael Fofana

and Tanguy Bernard and are currently being attended by

DAPS employees. A 2 days course which aims is also to

introduce and give an overview of impact studies.

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IFPRI WCAO opens its doors to the media.

Friday, 20

April 2012- To

celebrateWorld

Earth Day,

IFPRI WCAO

hosted a press

breakfast

conference in

the Dakar office, an opportunity to reflect on the many

global challenges : climate change, lack of water, arable

land and food insecurity.This meeting also allowed

journalists to have a better knowledge of the Institute,

of its activities, resources, statistics and publications

available for their profesion, policy makers, researchers

and students.The speakers of the press conference were:

Dr. Ousmane Badiane, IFPRI Director for Africa and

Dr. Ismael Fofana. Various topics were discussed such

as IFPRI’s history, role and mission, Implementation of

CAADP, Forgien Land Investment and Food Security

in West Africa.

The Thematic Research Notes series are launched

-April 2012- IFPRI’s West and

Central Africa Office has recently

launched a new Policy Note series

targeted to policy makers and

analysts in the region. Under the

leadership of Fleur Wouterse two

thematic Resaerch Notes have been published, the 1st

one on “Foreign Direct Investment in Land in West

Africa” and the 2nd on: “Patterns of Growth and

Structural Transformation in Africa”. These

publications are a series of 4 annual ones, a gathering of

contributions of expert researchers of other institutions

on a commun theme; the two first editions are available

at the resource center. The next Thematic Research

Note will be on the issue of social protection.

Fleur and Nick win the “OIKOCREDIT Young Researcher Award”

-March 2012 -Nicola Francesconi and Fleur Wouterse from WCAO were awarded with the “OIKOCREDIT Young Researcher award”, based on the

paper they presented in Berlin at the conference on “Cooperative Responses to Global Challenges”, organized by Humboldt University (Berlin) and UN-DESA (NY). The award was assigned after the scrutiny of over 100 papers from all over the world on topics related to cooperative organization and collective action for development.

AGRODEP holds it first workshop in Dakar

March 13, 2012- The

African Growth &

Development Policy

(AGRODEP)

Modeling

Consortium held its

first training course

in IFPRI WCAO on March 13-15, 2012. Twelve

AGRODEP members from nine African countries

attended the training course on "Building and Updating

Social Accounting Matrices” (SAM). Participants were

introduced to the national accounts tables before being

reconciled into a single framework: the SAM.

Participants used a GAMS-based program to reconcile

information into the SAM framework. They also learnt

how to transform a SAM into an input-output table

used by global CGE models. The course was conducted

by Ismael Fofana.

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Birthday celebrations at WCAO

Each month we celebrate WCAO team

members’ birthdays, here are the pictures

of Sunday, Ismael, Ligane, Mariama,

Kader and Hawa’s birthday celebrations.

WCAO team at the annual RISE in DC

-February 2012 -This year the

WCAO team was well represented

at RISE (Retreat for IFPRI Staff

Everywhere). This annual

gathering created opportunities for

dialogue across divisions, offices,

and job functions. RISE enabled

to gain a better understanding of

the CRPs and IFPRI's strategic

direction, and to connect with

colleagues. Rise is a meaningful

process that intends to contribute

to the improvement of IFPRI

research programs and the overall

welfare of the institute. After

RISE a whole day was devoted to

the WCAO retreat, an opportunity

to overview this year’s activities

and overall strategy.

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They just joined the IFPRI WCAO team!

Dr Agnès Le Port/Post Doctoral Fellow She is from the PHND division. She has a PhD in Epidemiology since 2010 and holds a Masters in Public Health in Developing Countries. She worked on malaria during pregnancy and infancy, in Bolivia, Senegal and Benin. Her research interests focus on Maternal and Child Health, Nutrition and Care.

Abdoulaye Cissé/ Intern He is from Gaston Berger University and is working on Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Model for West and Central Africa with Dr Ismael Fofana