In Acord Newsletter Issue 1: February 2001

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Article 3:

Programme News

1. CLUSTERING

SOUTHERN AFRICA
ACORD's Southern Africa programming recently prioritised two thematic areas:

• HIV/AIDS and Gender
• Governance and Civil Society

The region is currently refining these themes and is assessing its strengths in these broad areas.

HORN OF AFRICA
The region's current programmes are:

• Ert/07: Savings & Credit project in the Central Zone, Eritrea
• Ert/08: Rehabilitation and Micro-finance Project, Eritrea
• Eth/08: Food Security and Micro-finance, rural Dire Dawa, Ethiopia
• Eth/10: HIV/AIDS awareness project, Dire Dawa, Ethiopia
• Sud/26: Support to Internally Displaced Persons, Khartoum, Sudan.

WEST AFRICA
The programmes are currently grouping themselves into three large area programmes:

• Sahel I : which combines the Mali, Mauritania and Burkina Faso programmes.
• Sahel II: which combines the Chad, Nigeria and North Cameroon programmes.
• Forest Zone: which combines the Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia programmes.

The region has chosen to focus on five thematic areas: civil society, Aids, conflict, pastoralism and poverty.

ACORD is extremely concerned with the current situation in West Africa's Forest Zone in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. There are large numbers of displaced people and are there are reportedly around 700,000 refugees in Guinea alone. ACORD intends to undertake a programme identification in Guinea to establish what can be done.

EAST AFRICA & GREAT LAKES
Following on from the consolidation of the Rwanda programmes into Rwa/12 in 2000, ACORD's Burundi programmes recently consolidated into a single Bur/6 programme. The Uganda programmes are starting to consolidate along similar lines (Uga/21 and Uga/11).

2. RESEAERCH HIGHLIGHTS

SOUTHERN AFRICA
A researcher is currently collecting qualitative and quantitative data to assess the impact of ACORD's Total Child programme in Namibia. This is a difficult task as it is trying to measure real social changes to long-standing social problems.

HORN OF AFRICA
Various research projects are taking place in the region. These include:

• Gender and conflict research ( Sudan & Somalia)
• Social dynamics in Gambella, Ethiopia (focusing on gender and conflict)
• Land tenure problems in Juba, southern Sudan.

WEST AFRICA
ACORD and IIED are currently collaborating on a research project on gender and natural resource management in Mali. The project aims to contribute to the establishment of agreed frameworks for access and management of natural resources in programme areas.

EAST AFRICA & GREAT LAKES
Research on child headed households in Rwanda was recently completed. Preliminary results should be available by the beginning of March.

Research is being done on the views and attitudes of Burundi refugees in exile in Tanzania. The research aims to ensure conditions conducive to their peaceful reintegration into Burundi.

The processing of COPE fieldwork material from Uganda is nearing completion. COPE intends to carry out further analysis of benefit both to the Uga/16 programme and to ACORD's overall conflict analysis work.

3. HAND OVERS

SOUTHERN AFRICA
ACORD plans to hand over the Gambos pastoralist peoples support programme in Southern Angola (Ang/5) to ADRA, a local Angolan NGO, at the end of 2001. The programme is currently jointly managed by ACORD and ADRA. A detailed phase-out strategy was planned at the beginning of the second phase, which started in 1998. ADRA, are already heavily involved in the management of the programme through their monitoring team and all the programme staff have contracts with them.

HORN OF AFRICA
Two programmes were successfully handed over at the end of 2000:

• Sud/12 Port Sudan programme
• Eth/02 Dire Dawa programme

WEST AFRICA
Parts of the West Africa programmes were recently handed over:

• Sahel: Burkina Faso. The first phase-out was completed in December 2000. The staff and some community members have formed an NGO.
• Bokoro, Chad: the activities were formally handed over in January to l'Association Intervillageoise de Developpement, a local NGO.
• Bitkine, Chad: part of the programme was handed over to NAGDARO, a local NGO.

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