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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
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