At the invitation of FAO, a meeting of the FOSA Focal Points from the 15 countries of the West Africa Sub-region was held at the Forestry Training Centre of Thiès, Senegal, from 7 to 10 November 2000. The three day meeting was an occasion to present the draft country outlook papers, to exchange information and to strengthen the FOSA team.
The Forestry Outlook Study for Africa (acronym - FOSA) is an initiative led by FAO and carried out in partnership with all African nations, the African Development Bank, the European Commission, regional and sub-regional inter-governmental organisations, the World Bank and others. The Forestry Outlook Study for Africa was endorsed by the African countries at the 11th Session of the African Forestry and Wildlife Commission (AFWC), held in Dakar, Senegal in April 1998. Activities under FOSA commenced in October 1998, and will run through July 2002.
FOSA is a process for analysing the future potential of the forestry sector, contributing to the well being of African citizens through its economic, social and environmental functions. FOSA will analyse the status, trends and driving forces shaping African forestry, provide a region-wide vision of the sector for the year 2020, and identify policies, programme and investment options that will help move the sector in desirable directions.
In every country, the Ministry in charge of forestry has appointed a FOSA Focal Point who will coordinate the activities at national level and who will prepare the country outlook paper. Instructions and advice concerning its content were given during the planning meetings organised in 1999 in every sub-region. FAO's financial contribution to each FOSA Focal Point is 1,000 US $. A number of technical notes were regularly sent to support them in their reflection work on the outlook of their forestry sector.
After approximately ten months of work, every FOSA Focal Point was able to present a first draft of their country outlook paper. Besides, sub-regional consultants were identified and asked to work with the Focal Points at sub-region level. This sub-regional report will integrate these national outlook studies and will further be based on a number of special thematic studies (sub-regional and some regional in nature). The creation of an information and reflection network amongst all the FOSA Focal Points will be an important support for the writing of the sub-regional report.
The country forestry outlook papers, now underway in each country, aim to capture the African countries' perception on the future of their forestry sector by the year 2020.
The objectives of the West African workshop for FOSA Focal Points were the following:
¬ present the draft country outlook paper, and state the progress made ;
¬ provide the FOSA Focal Points with new elements on the outlook methodology;
¬ introduce the sub-regional consultants and discuss the terms of collaboration with the Focal Points;
¬ advance prospective methodologies to feed the sub-regional perception concerning forestry in Africa;
¬ finally, present FOSA future activities.
This meeting was opened by the Director of the Cabinet of the Minister of Environment of Senegal in the presence of the FAO Representative in Dakar and the Director of the Forestry Department (see appendix 1 for the full introduction note).
Introductions
In his introduction, Mr J.L. Blanchez from FAO, re-iterated the FOSA objectives: an outlook study initiated by a multidisciplinary team that will lead to an overall perception of the forestry sector for the year 2020. In this way, it will be possible to foresee an everlasting concerted action by the year 2020. This perception will result from a system analytic approach (round time), which is predictable and combined with a global approach (long time), characterised by some events unexpected in nature and in form.
During the meeting, the following points emerged :
1) arising of many new, timely, questions which were not in the minds 10 years ago ;
2) strong tendencies in the present development ;
3) weak signals that at present are not well understood ;
4) discussing of the implications of the forestry development for a hypothetical country representing the possible perception of African forestry by the year 2020.
