The EU has decided to allocate €50 million to the government of Burkina Faso to help it in its work for security and development in the north of the country. A financing agreement was signed in Brussels on Tuesday 5 June by European Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development Neven Mimica and Burkina Faso's Minister for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation Alpha Berry, in the presence of the country's President Marc Roch Christian Kaboré, ahead of the European Development Days (EDD 2018).
Financed by the emergency trust fund for Africa, this direct budgetary support will enable the government of Burkina Faso to strengthen the territorial network of security forces, improve access to water and strengthen the provision of care through the construction of health and welfare centres, the purchase of ambulances and the availability of medicine, the European Commission states.
This project comes in support of the Emergency Programme for the Sahel (PUS), a government initiative adopted in July 2017 to accelerate implementation of the National Plan for Economic and Social Development (PNDES) in the areas of Burkina Faso experiencing a high level of insecurity since the Libyan crisis. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)