Luxembourg's development cooperation - Annual report 2012

Luxembourg’s Development Cooperation has invested heavily in delegated cooperation and joint cooperation initiatives within the context of the implementation of the EU Code of Conduct on Complementarity and the Division of Labour in Development Policy. In 2012, Luxembourg was involved in no less than eleven delegated cooperation initiatives and four joint cooperation programmes in nine partner countries.
Indeed Luxembourg took the lead role in the vocational training sector in Cape Verde, Senegal and Burkina Faso. Luxembourg also assumed this leading role in the tourism sector in Nicaragua and in the health sector in Kosovo. This highlights the area-specific sectorial approach initiated by Luxembourg’s Development Cooperation, which has led to tangible improvements.

For example, in Cape Verde the year 2012 was devoted to the development of an integrated policy document for education, vocational training and employment, through an inter-ministerial committee reuniting with the three supervisory ministries (the Ministry for Youth, the Ministry of Employment and the Ministry of Education). At the same time, the construction of a secondary school and five new vocational training centres completed the network of educational infrastructures in Cape Verde. Finally, having participated in two Budgetary Support Group monitoring missions in order to evaluate the performance of Cape Verde in terms of public finance administration and management, Luxembourg disbursed its instalment of the sectorial budgetary support for 2012.

In Nicaragua, Luxembourg’s role as the lead donor in the tourism sector was greatly appreciated. Proof of this can be seen in the fact that the European Commission delegated the management of the “Colonial and Volcano Trail” tourist project (8.25 million euros) to Luxembourg’s Development Cooperation; this project complements Luxembourg’s bilateral “Coffee Trail” project. Another good example is the programme of support for technical and vocational training in Burkina Faso that was formulated in collaboration with the French Development Agency and Austrian Development Cooperation. In late 2012, Taiwan and Switzerland requested to be included in this joint programme.

Bilateral donors are trying to avoid duplication and overlap of their cooperation programmes in an increasingly systematic way. This proved to be beneficial in the case of the extension of the Niger ICP, when the government of Niger asked Luxembourg to enlarge the geographical scope of its activities. Rather than creating a new project, with all the attendant additional structures and costs, the additional support activities were incorporated into a Danish water supply programme in the Zinder and Diffa regions (2 million euros). Similarly, Switzerland’s Development Cooperation entrusted Luxembourg with its financial support (1.38 million euros) for the implementation of a ten-year educational development programme in the Dosso region.

Aid coordination between European donors was also evident in Asia. In Vietnam, where Luxembourg’s Development Cooperation is preparing the progressive withdrawal of its development aid by 2015 in order to develop relationships on other levels, Luxembourg contributed 2 million euros to the European Commission for the health sector. Conversely, Luxembourg is one of the main donors in the health sector in Laos; hence the Belgian Development Cooperation is delegating 2.25 million euros to Luxembourg within the context of its withdrawal from the country. Furthermore, Luxembourg’s Development Cooperation actively supports the European joint programming approach in Laos and, given that the 3rd ICP is in line with the cycle of national programming, it is now in an ideal position to participate in the 2014-2015 transition strategy, and to integrate the next ICP (2016-2020) into the European joint programming exercise.