Chad, March 2022
Workshop on improving the first NRDS draft of Chad
Introduction
In August and October 2019, Chad organized two working weeks with an aim to develop its NRDS. Due to COVID-19 pandemic, the development of the strategy was stopped after generation of the first draft dated March 2020.
After participating in the 8th CARD General Assembly held in October 2021, the main members of the Rice Task Force (RTF) requested the CARD Secretariat to support in restarting the NRDS’ development process. In this regard, the CARD Secretariat responded positively by suggesting organization of two separate events, to finalize the NRDS draft, namely: (i) A 3-day workshop with the RTF core members and (ii) A working week with all members of the RTF. The objective of the 3-day workshop was to resume the NRDS’ development process by reviewing the first draft of strategy.
The intention of this report is to highlight the outcome of the 3-day workshop that was held from March 09 to March 11, 2022 in a conference room at Hotel La Résidence, N’Djamena. The participants of the workshop comprised of 6 members from the Chad RTF core team. The CARD Regional Consultant facilitated the workshop remotely. The Technical Coordinator of the CARD Secretariat also attended the beginning and the end of the workshop virtually.
Working methodology
The working basis of the workshop focused on the detailed comments and suggestions already made on the first NRDS draft by the Regional Consultant and shared with the NRDS’ Focal Point in Chad.
The methodology agreed upon by the participants was to work in plenary, as follows: (i) to review the draft strategy including the detailed comments of the Regional Consultant and discuss on each of the areas for improvement, and (ii) to elaborate the distribution of the blank parts of the document among participants.
Results achieved
Points for improvement were extensively discussed to a point of consensus and common understanding. Due to lack of adequate formulations, it was highlighted that certain ideas expressed in the document could be confusing, such as the competitiveness of local rice and its accessibility at the consumer level, especially for those with low purchasing power. Reformulations and clarifications were made immediately while other ideas were to be refined later based on work distribution between the participants and the CARD Regional Consultant.
Other elements were added in the document such as: (i) institutional buyers of local rice like WFP, FAO and prisons and (ii) a new Specific Objective. The latter was obtained by splitting the specific objective 3 “Improving the institutional environment, the technical and organisational capacities of stakeholders”. Thus, specific objective 3 is now limited to the improvement of the institutional environment, while specific objective 4 focuses on strengthening of the technical and organisational capacities of stakeholders.
In addition, the implementation of the first draft was set to start in 2022 and to end in 2030 (a total of 08 years) by considering the delay experienced in finalizing the draft. Also, the new starting point of the strategy and its duration will be specified in the new version of the strategy, including all related implications in terms of calculations and projections.
Way forward
The various points of improvement as well as the elaboration of the parts left blank, will be made by the various members of the RTF who have been designated for this purpose. Then, the second draft strategy will be consolidated by the NRDS’ Focal Point and sent to the CARD Secretariat before the end of March 2022.
A working week bringing together all members of the RTF will be scheduled to finalize the NRDS draft in early May 2022, followed by the organization of the national validation workshop.
