Sahel Resilience Strengthening (SARES)

The intended service is to provide and manage a short-term expert (STE) pool of experts with national and international experience for assignments and missions that contribute to the achievement of the defined outputs and indicators as well as providing high-quality technical and methodological expertise in the following four fields of interventions.

The first field of intervention focuses on the improvement of locale capacities for natural resource governance and related conflict resolution. The services under this field of expertise focus on capacity development for local structures in charge of NRG. They comprise, among others, land commissions at the level of villages and municipalities, local disaster risk management (DRM) committees, as well as municipal structures, deconcentrated sectoral services and local dialogue and conflict resolution mechanisms, also involving traditional leaders. Furthermore, under these services tailor-made trainings and advisory services for (at least) 320 representatives of (at least) 100 of these structures at the different levels are conceived and implemented. NRG tools include, among others, methods for the elaboration of local agreements (Conventions Locales / Contrats sociaux) between different population groups, e.g., on transhumance corridors, as well as disaster risk management tools.

The second field of intervention aims at improving the social and infrastructural preconditions for better inter-group relations. Through this, the project builds the capacities of community leaders to engage in inclusive, participatory community dialogues. Such dialogues serve to identify measures that could help bringing together (potentially) conflicting groups ("connectors"). "Dividers", i.e., topics, situations, or processes that aggravate differences and conflicts between population groups, are identified. In a second step, the project supports communities in addressing "connectors" and "dividers" they identified with concrete measures. To strengthen positive intergroup contacts and to connect different groups and people, the project also promotes cultural activities. They also serve to sensitize on crosscutting issues like gender, human rights, protection of natural resources, nutrition, hygiene etc.

The third field of intervention targets the improvement of competencies of agro-pastoral households and producer groups for production, processing, preservation, and marketing of nutrient rich agricultural and animal products. SARES supports the training of producers in good agricultural practices adapted to climate change and good aquaculture practices. The aims combine nutritional requirements with marketing/income-generating potential and include diversification of production at household level through the choice of varieties and species and the promotion of aquaculture. The project also develops the capacity of organizations and households to reduce post-harvest losses. It supports livestock production systems for both nomadic and sedentary target groups. Support for processing consists of equipment support and technical and organizational training, including training for the rehabilitation of production infrastructures. For marketing, the project analyses local and regional markets to decide which products are to be promoted. Marketing will then be supported through training for producers' organizations, the organization of joint sales, networking with outlets and with materials. Income generating activities related to agricultural value chains will also be supported by the project.

The fourth field of intervention aims at developing concepts for context-specific construction measures under the first three fields of intervention. The focus is on simple measures in the area of basic services and along the value chain of agro-pastoral households and producer groups. The coordination of the design, planning, preparation and implementation of the construction measures is carried out centrally by a cross-national construction component within the project. Based on previous experience, it can be assumed that many of the individual measures will be repetitive. One of the main project objectives is to maximize the benefits of regionality and to achieve synergy effects. The intention is therefore to develop a project-specific construction product catalogue in which standardized and pre-planned construction products can be found for direct implementation. This construction product catalogue is similar to a construction kit, from which the respective users can obtain extensive information on standardized optimal solutions according to their needs, as well as go directly into implementation. The catalogued and standardized products represent the "best solution", based on the multi-layered experience of GIZ and the "Construction in IC" group; these products are also intended to set an example for GIZ's quality standards and indirectly contribute to strengthening local capacities. A project-specific construction product catalogue is intended to provide orientation and make complex issues comprehensible. The focus is always on the users and stakeholders of the respective construction measures, both for the internal project managers and, above all, for the local partners and target groups. A construction product catalogue offers further synergy effects and opportunities for uncomplicated "scaling up" via other partners, particularly as part of the complementary approach.

The fifth field of intervention aims at facilitating cross sectoral services such as the organisaiton of workshops, regular planning workshops and feedback sessions, provision of translating services, assistance in the domain of visibility through the preparation of videos for social media, fact sheets, etc., and monitoring and assistance to implement measures that take into account the do-no-harm principle as well as modeling these services to be gender inclusive.