ACORD

The Lake Chad basin covers parts of Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad. Climatic changes over the last decades with poor rainfall and desertification, are leading to migration towards the more fertile Lake Chad basin. The pressure on the natural resources for agriculture, pastoralism and fishing around Lake Chad and its islands is ever increasing with the population influx, as all rely on the Lake for their livelihoods. This threatens the long-term ecological balance of the sub region.

Poverty is wide spread and food insecurity is a big problem, particularly in rural areas, and people often rely on seasonal work and cross-border smuggling to survive. Public investment in the Lake Chad area is low and civil society participation in governance issues remain weak, despite various opportunities provided by ongoing political decentralisation.

1. Chad: the Ouaddaï, Guéra, Rural N'djamena and Bokoro (Dababa) regions
2. Cameroon: the Extreme Northern province
3. Nigeria: the state of Bornou
4. Niger: Difa department (to start from 2006).

The Sahel II area programme aims to strengthen the capacities of civil society associations working on behalf of vulnerable sectors of the population and conducting advocacy work in favour of good governance at the local level.

• Strengthen the capacities of civil society, and promote local democracy and political decentralisation
• Promote good governance in the management of community affairs in order to ensure positive results
• Promote development policies that guarantee lasting control of livelihoods by the most disadvantaged
• Fight sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS with a preventive strategy.
• Consolidate and/or rehabilitate mechanisms used to prevent and manage inter-community conflicts

Back up

Local Governance and Civil Society: In Mongo, Bokoro and Am Dam districts and a part of rural N'Djamena, ACORD is supporting the elaboration of village developments plans. This process involves local authorities, local state technical services and communities. It is based on ACORD elaborated methodology on community intervention. The villages regroup in village associations that catalyze, manage, and monitor the implementation of the plans. This formation of inter-village associations builds a critical mass for engagement with the state and other stakeholders. ACORD builds the capacity of the village associations and federations, providing training on legal issues affecting their common life, management and monitoring of the development plans, and in engagement with donors and local government. ACORD has also trained paralegal officers to support the village associations. Through practical interventions, ACORD will also provide direct support to the implementation of some key areas of the villages development plans, e.g. income generation activities for women associations through microfinance, access to water and swamp management. In some cases ACORD support villages in intermediation and resource mobilization. In total, ACORD works with around 130 villages.

Being part of the national network of NGOs, ACORD has been very active in advocacy around the issue of oil in Chad, advocating for establishment of proper frameworks and mechanisms for management of the oil resources, to ensure that the poor communities would benefit, advocating for sustainable development and respect for the environment and investment in pro-poor programs.

In Chad, ACORD is currently chairing the network of international and local NGOs, CILONG. ACORD has promoted the participation of civil society in the PRSP process, supporting linkages between government and civil society.