Third meeting of the Steering Committee of the ADEFAC project

This meeting brought together representatives of the ministries in charge of forestry, vocational training and small and medium enterprises and handicrafts.

As usual, it was about validating the results of the year 2021, the budgeted annual work plan for the year 2022 and the priority themes of continuing education to be developed for 2022.

The concrete objectives of this third Steering Committee meeting were:

1. To inform the members and partners of the progress of the project;
2. To present and validate the following main project documents

• Technical and financial execution report 2021;
• List of changes in the Project Procedures Manual;
• Budgeted Annual Work Plan 2022;
• Priority training themes;

3. Present adaptations of certain project activities
4. Present a vision for the Continuing Education TWG

The meeting started at 9:10 am with the welcome address by the COMIFAC Secretary General, Mr. Hervé Martial MAÏDOU. This was followed by the opening remarks of Mr. Claude KACHAKA SUDI KAIKO, Regional Coordinator of RIFFEAC, and Mr. Benoit JOBBE-DUVAL, Director General of ATIBT.

After the introduction of the participants, the different stages of presentation of the activities and perspectives of the ADEFAC project were presented.

The four documents to be validated by the Steering Committee were presented by the members of the Technical Execution Team (TET) of the project and gave rise to questions and suggestions related to the realization of the activities. All the 04 documents were validated by the members of the Steering Committee, with some amendments to be made on the Budgeted Annual Work Plan in terms of wording of the expected results.

Four resolutions were taken at the end of this 3rd Steering Committee meeting:

1. Technical and Financial Report 2021 validated as it is
2. List of modifications in the project procedures manual, validated as it is
3. Budgeted Annual Work Plan 2022, validated subject to harmonization of the wording of the expected results
4. This year, there were no major differences in the number of votes for the choice of priority continuing education topics. 14 of the 20 topics proposed by the private sector received 10 or more votes:

• Basic accounting for craftsmen and SMEs
• Dryer operation
• Drying and preservation of wood
• Grading of lumber (species recognition and quality control)
• Calculation of a carbon balance
• Finishing techniques
• Leadership and team management
• Hygiene, health and safety at work
• Certification (standards)
• Controlled felling
• EFIR (logging, roads, works of art)
• Processing techniques (craftsmen and SMEs)
• Traceability
• Valuation of processing waste

Four recommendations were made:

• Communicate in advance of the Steering Committee meetings with the Ministers in order to have the names and contact information of their representatives, so that the documents can be sent to them as attachments to the meeting agenda at the same time as to the other participants in the meeting;
• Include in the activity tables of the annual report details of the number of women who participated in trainings, and participants in communication events;
• Make a simplified version of the Budgeted Annual Work Plan with fewer columns and using complete sentences;
• Create a regional network of "continuous training" TWGs to decide together on priority training topics.

The 3rd ADEFAC COPIL meeting ended at 1:30 pm.