Trainings

TRAININGS

Ghana and Sierra Leone

AFFORD successfully organised a 2 days in-country training workshop in Ghana and a 3 day in-country training and policy forum in Sierra Leone (1-2 March 2018 and 12-14 June 2018 respectively). Based on interest and lessons learnt from the Ghana training workshop, a policy forum on reducing costs of remittances was included as part of the Sierra Leone training workshop and was organised in partnership with AFFORD Sierra Leone who helped with local content and logistics.
The first 2 days of the training workshop in Ghana and Sierra Leone were on the same format and topics. They were both entitled: “Enabling and Enhancing Diaspora Contribution to Development and Job Creation”. 

Some of the participants from the Ghana in Country training workshop from the 1-2 March 2018 at the British Council Centre, Accra, Ghana

The overall outputs for Ghana and Sierra Leone training workshops can be summarized as follows: certificates were provided to those who participated in the Advocacy Training, which was delivered on advocacy and policy influencing; also, participants at the in-country training workshops were provided with advocacy and policy influencing manual. A roadmap for maximizing diaspora contribution to development and job creation was draft. Finally, a draft remittance factsheets for Ghana and Sierra Leone was produced, enabling us to track the progress of actions taken by the country to achieve SDG target 10c. 

Furthermore, the Sierra Leonean training focused on Target 10.c of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) during a third day, engaging in a "Remittances policy forum". 
The discussions of the forum covered the volume, costs and facts around remittances overview, experiences, challenges related to remittances and the implementation of the Sierra Leone Action Plan on Remittance. The remittance forum ended with commitments from the key contributors to form a Working Group / Steering Committee that will work with AFFORD SL and AFFORD UK to reduce the transaction costs of remittances to 3% or less in the Sierra Leonean Corridor.

Some of the participants in the Sierra Leone training workshop and policy forum from the 12-14 June, 2018 at the New Brookfield’s Hotel, Freetown

Burkina Faso

FORIM, and its member the Union des Associations Burkinabè de France (UABF) have worked on identifying, through the available findings of the surveys, the main challenges that were to be discussed during the in-country workshop, which took place in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on the 21-22 July 2018. 
Three main topics have been identified as priorities, drawing upon the main challenges that survey respondents have highlighted: local development, entrepreneurship and informal economy. For each of these topics, the Burkinabè diaspora face obstacles and are not able to fully fulfill their potential, due to either a lack of visibility of existing resources (support structures, financial mechanisms etc.) or to a lack of instruments altogether, or to a deficient cooperation between civil society and public authorities. 
Recommendations include, but are not limited to:
• Consolidating the website www.burkinadiaspora.org in order to match the needs of the diaspora
• Facilitating administrative procedures so that diaspora-led projects are processed quickly and diligently by relevant authorities
• Setting up a guarantee fund or a dedicated bank for diaspora projects
• Increasing networking and best-practices sharing initiatives among all stakeholders, both at national and international level

Participants in the Burkina Faso training workshop on the 21-22 July, 2018. 

Togo

An in-country traning with the Togolese diaspora was organised by FORIM in Paris, on the 14-15 June 2019. 

Further information and outcome of the meeting will be available soon.