Following the study conducted jointly in 2008 by GRET and danone.communities with ENDA-GRAF and IFAN, the decision was made to develop a fortified food using local products, processed locally and sold in schools in Dakar, Senegal (the “Lemateki” project). An additional study with three components was defined to acquire knowledge of school children’s nutritional status, understand the conditions for food distribution in schools, and develop foods that met a defined set of specifications. GRET and dc, in collaboration with the IRD’s UMR 204, are implementing the first component, which consists of conducting a diagnostic study of the nutritional status of school children between the ages of 6 and 13 in Dakar. As the nutritional status of this population is poorly documented, the goal of the study is to collect data on macronutrient and micronutrient status and on the coverage ratio for nutritional requirements using a crosscutting survey conducted on a representative sample of students. The sample population will be the subject of body dimension measurements, biological sampling, and a food consumption survey (children and household).

The objective of the PROMER Phase 2 is to contribute to rural poverty alleviation by creating and/or consolidat-ing the MPER generating lasting jobs and increasing and diversifying households’ revenues with an aim to equal-ity between the sexes. It began in January 2006, for a period of 7 years. The project’s specific objectives are as follows: - consolidate or create profitable MPERs that create lasing jobs in the project’s zones of concentration, thanks to easier access to financial and non-financial support services that are suitable, sustainable and decentralized; - improve structure and professionalism in the rural entrepreneurship sector according to selected com-modity chains and niches so as to foster better performance by enterprises, their integration in FOs, bet-ter consideration of their constraints and issues, and their effective participation in consultative frame-works and the dialogue with other actors on the local, regional and national levels; and - improve the political, legislative and institutional environment facilitating the creation and development of MPERs. The objectives of the mid-term assignment are to (i) evaluate the project’s overall performance and impact; (ii) assess the level of execution, the quality of the project’s management, impact and sustainability prospects; (iii) formulate recommendations for technical, institutional, human or financial re-orientations; and (iv) elaborate a project budget for project implementation from the mid-term review to the end of the project taking into account the recommendations or new orientations.

On two occasions in 2007 and 2008, the government of Guinea Conakry decided to close the country’s borders to the export of food products in order to regulate prices on the domestic market and improve the accessibility of basic essentials for urban consumers. Some farmers saw a reduction in outlets for the sale of their crops. They sometimes lost a large portion of their standing harvests due to the lack of a solvent market in Guinea (e.g. potato) or were forced to sell at a loss (rice producers and traders). Faced with this seeming contradiction between the interests of two segments of civil society, CFSI offered to work with the Conseil National des Organisations de la Société Civile de Guinée (CNOSC, the national council of Guinean civil society organizations) to refine the perception of the stakes, antagonisms and points of possible agreement, explore possible paths to overcome these divergences and bring the positions of civil society actors closer together in the framework of advocacy actions, and finally improve the coherency of cooperation actions targeting farmers and urban consumers. The purpose of this study, produced by GRET in collaboration with the CNOSC, was to illustrate, using Guinea Conakry as an example, the divides and bridges between diverse categories of actors, and identify possible paths to development that take into account the needs of the various actors. The study relies on (i) documentary analysis of the Guinean context, major agricultural commodity chains, and food production and consumption, and on (ii) the implementation of two case studies. The first case study looks at the divide between consumers’ and farmers’ interests, and focuses on the application of foodstuff exit restriction measures in response to social and political crises linked to drops in consumers’ purchasing power and their impacts on two crops, rice and potato. The second case study on the convergence of viewpoints between farmers and consumers studies the role of traders in food commodity chains and their relationships with the two groups of actors, more specifically in the rice, cassava and yam commodity chains. In addition to an analysis of the available quantitative data, this study aimed to expose the actors’ points of view to understand how they elaborate their positions, and find possible areas where their interests could be brought closer into alignment. To do so, two types of interviews with the actors were conducted: ? interviews in Conakry with civil society, farmers’ organizations, the Ministries of Agriculture and Trade, unions, traders, etc.; and ? regional interviews, conducted by the CNOSC through its regional offices, with three categories of actors: farmers, traders and consumers. A workshop to discuss the study results was held in Paris in the presence of CNOSC representatives in September 2009. The CFSI received financial support from the MAEE, AFD and Paris city hall for the implementation of this study and the workshop.