Luxembourg's development cooperation - Annual report 2015

Population 17,4 million
Surface area 274 220 km2
GNP per inhabitant (PPP in $) 1 591
Classification in HDI 183/188

The Indicative Cooperation Programme (ICP) II initially planned for the 2008-2012 period has seen two successive extensions: the first followed the mid-term review in 2011 and led to its extension for the 2013 to 2015 period with an additional budgetary allocation which was also assigned to the primary education and information and communication technologies (ICT) sectors. 

In 2015, the political context was not very conducive either to finalising the cooperation activities in progress or to making large-scale disbursements. The primary task of the transitional authorities which have governed the country since the popular uprising of October 2014 and the fall of Blaise Compaoré’s regime was to organise elections. Therefore, the process of identification of the ICP III was only launched in 2015 but, given the large amount of funding still available for the ICP II, Luxembourg and Burkina Faso agreed to sign a rider to extend the ICP II until 2016 and to leave the task of carrying out the identification process of the ICP III to the future, democratically elected authorities.

Burkina Faso has begun the process of drawing up the new 2016-2020 development strategy for the country – the final policy directions and the validation of the strategy are awaiting the agreement of the new authorities to emerge from the elections of 29 November 2015. The extension of the ICP II, the identification of a ICP III in the first few months of 2016, its signature before summer of 2016 and the formulation of activities in 2016 will enable perfect alignment with the new development strategy in Burkina Faso.

In mid-2015, for one year Luxembourg took over the Presidency of the troika, the body which coordinates and establishes the technical and financial partners’ dialogue with the government in order to ensure that the country’s development priorities are implemented with effective assistance.

In the field of ICT, a project has been created with the Ministry of Digital Economy and Post and the national agency for the promotion of ICT (ANPTIC). This project, which will cost 17 million euros, aims to upgrade the state’s internal network (RESINA) as well as improve its reliability and geographical reach, including using satellites. The start of the project has been severely delayed due to the political and economic circumstances prevalent in Burkina Faso since the popular uprising in October 2014.