A tripartite partnership agreement to set a support programme for peasant organisations was signed in Yaounde yesterday. Peasants in rural areas have been playing an important role in the economy through agro-pastoral and micro-business activities. Operating individually or grouped in common initiative groups, cooperatives or associations, peasants face difficulties related to low production, poor farm-to-market roads and little access to loans offered by classical banking institutions.
It was in a bid to spur the contribution of peasant organisations to a viable rural social economy that a tripartite agreement setting up the support programme for peasant social economy organisations, PAOPES, was signed yesterday February 16, in Yaounde by the Ministry of Small and Medium-Size Enterprises, Social Economy and Handicraft, MINPMEESA, the Association of peasant organisations, COPES, and two microfinance institutions: Crédit du Sahel and FIFFA.
Speaking during the signing ceremony, the Secretary General of MINPMEESA, Marie Louise Secke Pouka said PAOPES is a programme that will assist peasants to promote their activity, alleviate poverty and enable them become an essential link to the national production chain. “The programme will improve on the performance of peasant social economy organisations through structuring, capacity building and the funding of micro-projects,” she held.
As a tripartite initiative involving the state, the private sector and peasant organisations, PAOPES will empower rural peasants with tools and strategies to enable them participate in economic growth through the production of goods and services. The programme will support over 500,000 peasant organisations in the first phase of its operation to last three years. Overall, it is intended to fund over 1,000,000 micro-projects and create over 6,000,000 direct and indirect jobs by 2015 throughout the country. Projected to cost over FCFA 25 billion, PAOPES will be funded by contributions from peasant organisations, microfinance institutions, the state and its development partners.
For its effective implementation, PAOPES will benefit from the involvement of Israel that will contribute its technical know-how in boosting agricultural production. The Spanish firm, CONSOLID SPAIN, will open up farm-to-market roads in production zones using modern soil stabilisation techniques while the Canadian Executive Services Organisation, CESO, will build the capacities of peasants and managers of the programme. On the other hand, microfinance institutions involved will provide loans at 5 per cent interest rates to peasant organisations while providing other financial services adapted to peasants’ needs.
According to the Director of Social Economy at MINPMEESA, Dieudonné Alima, the creation of PAOPES is part of MINPMEESA’s 2011 plan of action to set up support mechanisms to boost growth and employment among the peasant population in the rural areas.
