Lot 1 of the European Commission’s (EC) Framework Contract “Services for the Implementation of External Aid” (FWC SIEA), addresses issues related to the management of natural resources and resilience. As such, one of the projects recently awarded under this Lot 1 deals with the malnutrition in Chad and how to assist the country to achieve higher levels of food and nutritional security in Chad.
Despite its move from an agro-pastoral to an oil country back in 2003, Chad has struggled to reap the benefits of this petroleum discovery and continues to be extremely lowly classed in the Human Development Index. The sharp decrease in oil prices in 2014, coupled with continuous attacks by the Boko-Haram sect, has continued to stifle the country’s development.
The stagnation in Chad’s development has ensured that the country’s food insecurity has continued to affect a large portion of the population – in fact, the number of people requiring food assistance in the periods between 2015-16 and 2016-17 exceeded 1 million. The consistent and significant food insecurity has led to chronic malnutrition in the country, a condition which currently affects almost half (40%) of children under the age of five.
Given the above context, the National Indicative Programme (NIP) of the 11th European Development Fund (EDF) for the 2014-2020 period focuses on 3 sectors, of which food security is the first, with over 65% of the total funds allocated to it. It is in the scope of this sector that AETS has recently been awarded a project which aims to promote the socio-economic development of Chad by reducing the malnutrition in the country. Overall, the mission will be centred on improving the management of irrigation water of the Guéra, Ouaddaï and Wadi Fira regions, focusing on identifying sites that allow for optimal agricultural development in order to carry out agricultural irrigation installations. For this, AETS will provide preliminary studies that will enable the appropriate selection of the sites to be developed, the reorganisation of the population in the management of future developments and selection of sites to be developed for an improved implementation of the Chad Nutritional and Food Security Programme (SAN, French acronym), financed by the 11th FED.