Cooperation with the EEC

by Joso MELO DE SAMPAIO

Cape Verde joined Lom in 1977, just two years after Independence. Thus it has been cooperating with the Community for 15 years, an exercise which has brought it financing worth ECU I 17 million (roughly 10 438 000 000 Cape Verdean escudos), not including what it is to get under the first LomV financial protocol. This aid was divided as follows (ECU).

Figure

The main aims of Community aid fit in well with the country’s general policy for the long term, i.e. to raise the standard of living, combat drought, work for food security and cut unemployment.

Lom & II programmes

The two national indicative programmes here helped achieve the main aims of the first national development plan, in particular by improving hygiene in Praia and increasing the water supply (and building drainage facilities and urban distribution networks, installing sewage systems in the most underprivileged areas and setting up an urban rubbish collection system). A programme of micro-projects was also run for the people of Santa Caterina and LFerreira (on Santiago). Generators were supplied to the Praia and Mindelo power stations to boost the electricity output of these two towns and a Praia Development Master Plan was produced to avoid new districts springing up unplanned and identify new areas of urbanisation.

EEC support was given to the government’s hydro-agricultural strategy of regularising rainwater runoff and encouraging infiltration with a series of rural engineering works (dykes, banks etc) and large-scale tree planting. One of Cape Verde’s biggest problems is its inadequate rainfall and hilly terrain and it has to avoid such rain as it gets running off into the sea. If it manages to do this, the cropland can gradually be extended and the structural shortage of cereals and other crops can be reduced.

The Community has made an active contribution to the huge anti-desertification campaign, particularly with a vast reafforestation scheme. On independence, the country had 2957 hectares of forest, but there are 35 000 ha now, which translate into almost 3 million trees planted every year, (equivalent to 9.23 trees per inhabitant per year).

Italy has joined the EEC on the transport and communications front, cofinancing a plan to improve Sal International Airport by reorganising the buildings for national and international travellers and the roadways and other networks. The equipment supplied has improved air traffic, assistance and navigation facilities and aid and assistance to aircraft.

Non-programme schemes

Food aid: ECU 32 million-worth of food aid (cereals, milk, butteroil, beans and so on) was sent out to Cape Verde under Lom and II. The local practice with food aid is to sell it to the people and set up counterpart funds which are managed by the FDN (the national development fund) and used to finance labour-intensive schemes to combat desertification and foster food security via rural engineering, building local roadways, planting trees and so on. This has a very remarkable effect on employment in rural areas and helps settle the people in the countryside and encourages them not to drift into the big towns.

Emergency aid: These schemes got ECU 4.05 million and 94% of it was used to help cope with the effects of the drought. The rest went into locust control schemes and relief for flood victims.

NGO co-financing: There were 30 cofinanced schemes over the period. They were worth ECU 2 384 000, a very significant amount bearing in mind that it represents 1.3 % of the monies the Community allocated to NGOs throughout the world at this time.

Stabex: The country received ECU 1.305 million in 1977-84 to make up for the loss in banana export earnings triggered by persistent drought, but it has not needed help from Stabex since.

LomII programmes

Cape Verde was allocated ECU 23 million here, ECU 20.5 million of it in grants and the rest as risk capital managed by the EIB.

The national indicative programme was signed in Praia in November 1985, but since the Community aid had to be icluded in the second national development (1986-90), the Government was unable to put forward an action programme until 1987, when the aim was to contribute to the regional development policy by:

- striking a fresh balance between the population of Praia and available resources (especially water);

- raising the standard of living;

- optimising municipal management.

Community aid, focused on the development of Praia, involved a number of interdependent schemes.

All schemes were included in a Praia City Development Programme for which a financing agreement was signed in Praia on 13 August 1988.

The schemes which have been identified and are currently being implemented are as follows.

a) Drinking water production and supply, ECU 6 million: I. Building three drainage galleries - the Bota Rama gallery (800 m long and producing between 350 and 800 cubic metres of water per day), the Mosquito (1100 m long, to raise water up to 175 m and able to provide a flow of at least 600 cubic metres per day) and the Minta Agua (500 m, with a minimum flow of 800 cubic metres per day). 2. Building an underground dam (Agues Verdes) to boost the output of this spring by about 350 cubic metres per day. The water produced by all these new sources, including the boreholes at Salineiro and S. Joao Baptista (work carried out as part of a borehole programme), will be supplied to Praia down a concrete conduit about 36 km long. A technical prefeasibility study was run for the Trinidade dam (3 km upstream of Praia), which should be able to provide the city with at least 2000 cubic metres of water per day. Additional studies (of economic and technical viability) and the specifications for implementation are being produced with the help of Spanish cooperation.

b) Water supply and drainage, ECU 3.5 million: A study of the modernisation of the water, drainage, sewage and rubbish collection master plan is being run, as is a scheme to reorganise municipal services in Praia and Mindelo and ensure technical assistance for Praia’s water and drainage management. The infrastructure planned here depends on the studies just mentioned and has therefore had to be carried over to the next Convention. Household waste collection and equipment and material have been supplied and the daily collection in Praia doubled as a result.

c) Electricity production, ECU 2.5 million: This involves remodelling the administrative side of the existing power station, installing and connecting 17 medium and low voltage transformer posts and installing a medium voltage supply network of about 18 km and a low voltage supply network of about 36 km. A feasibility study for a new power station (electrical energy production in association with water production) will be started soon.

d) Services to new districts, ECU 4.8 million: In accordance with the recommendations of the master plan, roads etc are being built in the districts of Palmarejo and S. Filipe (85 ha). This will ensure decent conditions for 15 000 people, bring in revenue for the town hall and give a boost to the building trade. Spanish cofinancing helped with the electrical side of this infrastructure and this made it possible to extend the Community operation to other parts of Praia (the industrial areas, the historic centre and link roads to the new districts and new building promotion quarters).

e) Vocational education and training, ECU 2.2 million: Once the studies are complete, Praia’s new technical centre will go up. The building, some 2800 m², is intended for the training of technicians and middle management in the areas in greatest demand on the employment market and will be able to cater for 500 students in stage one. The plan is to turn out 100 technicians and 50 middle-range cadres every year. The EEC will continue supporting the nation’s educational reform programme by providing local study awards so that instructors in additional basic education and secondary teachers can have training.

f) Improvements to urban management, ECU 0.5 million: Local administrative and urbanisation cadres in the various areas of planning and urban management are currently undergoing training in Europe as part of the programme. A further 10 have gone to Morocco to train in cartography and land surveying. A mapping operation to help with the running of priority sector schemes in the country is also being run and cartography and plotting equipment is to be supplied for Cape Verde’s Mapping Centre. An aerial photography and plotting scheme covering virtually the whole of the national territory is due to start very soon.

g) Monitoring, coordination and evaluation, ECU 0.3 million: An inter-ministerial programme monitoring committee has been set up to ensure unified steering of the programme. It combines representatives of all the technical ministries concerned, under the chairmanship of the national authorising officer and its main task is to coordinate the operation.

EIB: The EIB has contributed risk capital to the financing of scheme C (electricity production and supply), specifically for the supply of two 3000 KW generators and three transformers (two of 3000 KW and one of 360 KW). It has also financed changes to the station’s system of combustion, as well as technical assistance and training and also supplied spare parts and automobile, computer and fire-fighting equipment. The EIB financing was ECU 3 million.

Non-programme schemes

Food aid: Here, the EEC has signed the first food aid protocol, on a multiannual basis, in the history of its cooperation. The Community recognised the structural nature of the country’s food shortfall and, in May 1987, awarded multiannual aid, in annual consignments of 9000 tonnes of cereals, 3000 t of milkpowder and 200 t of vegetable oil, for 1987, 1988 and 1989. A further multiannual agreement covering 1990, 1991 and 1992 was signed in May 1990, so supplies of 9000 t of cereals and 800 t of vegetable oil will be sent annually during this time. Since the cereal harvest in 1989-90 was poor, the Community supplied additional food aid (3000 t of cereals) for 1990.

SIP - Sectoral import programme (building materials): When allocating the LomII non-programme reserve in March 1988, the Commission gave an additional ECU 4 million and Cape Verde proposed using this for a sectorial import programme to buy building materials for the construction boom in Praia (particularly for the more underprivileged sections of the population). The imported materials, i.e. redwood, pine, wood derivatives and concrete plaques, are sold on the local market to generate counterpart funds which can then be used to finance the Promebad programme to improve rundown areas (25%), step up the capital of the Cape Verde Savings Bank, which is responsible for building credit, particularly for the poorer sections of the population (25%) and to help with phase two of the building (about 52 houses) of the Housing Promotion Institute, the body in charge of building and allocating economy housing (50%).

Emergency aid - locust control: Successive locust invasions from the Sahel in November 1988 led the Community to provide the country with 3000 litres of insecticide and to cofinance (with Portugal) the provision of a helicopter, which is the best way of spraying in Cape Verde. Locust control was run on Santiago, Fogo and Santo Antao.

Regional cooperation

The meeting of EDF authorising officers in Praia in October 1986 laid down guidelines for Community support in regional cooperation. These are:

Anti-desertification, in particular by:

- improving, preserving and managing the forests;
- controlling and making rational use of underground and surface water;
- protecting and developing the catchment basins of the main rivers.

Cape Verde has not had a great deal of benefit from Sahel regional cooperation so far, because of its peripheral geographical and socio-economic. However, it has been involved in the following schemes.

- Diaper II - Improvements to the permanent regional food security diagnosis system

The idea here is to improve statistical information in the cereals and livestock sectors in the nine countries of the CILSS to make for easier formulation and regional coordination of national food sufficiency policies.

- PRS - Regional solar programme

This is to develop the Sahel’s only plentiful natural resource, solar energy. The idea is to bring in large-scale use of proven photovoltaic equipment in rural areas as an efficient contribution to desertification control, pumping water and improving living conditions thanks to the start of an electricity supply.

- PRG - Regional gas programme

This is to promote butane gas as a wood and charcoal substitute in the Sahel to reduce the demands urban consumers make on the forests.

- Precons - Sahel Regional Reafforestation and Soil Protection Programme

This was designed with the close cooperation of the Cape Verdean authorities and the Delegation with a view to transferring reafforestation and conservation techniques tested and applied in Cape Verde for some years now to other countries in the Sahel. The scheme involves developing and reafforesting 4700 ha of lard on Santiago, Santo Antao and Santo Nicolau, to be used as a training area for Sahelian foresters from other CILSS countries. A forestry handbook, other teaching equipment and training sessions in the CILSS countries are also planned. A lot is expected of this particular scheme, which is a genuine example of South-South transfer of know-how, Cape Verde being a country with a very sound knowledge and very successful record of soil conservation and the wooding of arid terrain.

- PFIE - Regional Environmental Training and Information

This is to make primary school children aware of the threats which desertification poses to the environment and food security in the nine Sahel countries and train them in the techniques of desertification control.

LomV

On 7 December, the LomV (first financial protocol) national indicative programme was signed in Praia. This means the Community will be providing Cape Verde with a total of ECU 27 million, ECU 23 million of it as Commission-managed grants and ECU 4 million as ElB-managed risk capital. This does not include any additional resources from Article 245 or any non-programme aid allocated mid-way through the first financial protocol.

The focal area of Community cooperation will cover the Praia region (or Concelho) and the schemes to be run are aimed at:

- improving the social infrastructure and providing essential goods and services;

- improving the economic environment, in particular on the infrastructure side; - improving the living conditions of the rural and suburban populations in the Concelho de Praia to reduce the flow of people moving into the capital;

- helping the government drive to set up a better urban management system;

- backing up the institutions in charge of managing public services;

- helping develop human resources, particularly in technical education.

The Community aid will involve schemes to:

- produce drinking water, by continuing schemes to improve drinking water availability;

- supply water and drainage facilities and collect household waste;

- produce and supply electricity and lay on supplies in the rural areas and around the town;

- build roads to the new districts, in particular to the industrial ones, with a view to promoting the private sector;

- improve the Praia Cartography and Surveying Department;

- reinforce the start-up and operation of the Praia technical school by providing technical assistance and running training schemes;

- give technical support to improve the departments and institutions responsible for running the projects and managing the instruments as part of a sectoral policy.

A protocol of intent on the EIB operations has also been signed and Cape Verde has said it hopes to present projects in the following areas for financing:

- transport: a Port of Mindelo modernisation programme;

- SME: SME promotion schemes;

- energy: electrical energy and water production and distribution projects.

The Cape Verdean Government has set out its regional cooperation priorities along three lines.

- Continuation of the anti-desertification and food security drives to reflect the guidelines laid down at the Praia meeting of October 1986, in connection with the other countries of West Africa. - Given its special geographical and cultural situation, Cape Verde hopes to get financing for cooperation on training, culture etc with other Portuguese-speaking nations.

- The same goes for the countries in the Caribbean, bearing in mind the similarity of these island countries’ tourist, transport and trade problems.

EEC-Cape Verde fisheries agreement

The Community and Cape Verde initialled an agreement on fishing off Cape Verde on 12 January 1990. This document, signed for an initial period of three years with the possibility of a two-year extension, means that Community vessels can now fish in Cape Verde’s fishing zone. It authorises 45 vessels - 21 tuna ships using seine-nets, 24 tuna canners and surface trawlers - to fish for highly migratory species, two bottom trawlers to fish for demersal species and two experimental ships to fish for cephalopods in Cape Verdean waters.

Financial compensation and the experimental fishing will give Cape Verde ECU 1950 000 over the three-year period. There will also be an ECU 500 000 scientific and technical programme and ECU 160 000-worth of study and practical training awards will be granted.

J.M.D.S.