The World Bank is piecing together an $800 Million project called the Food System Resilience Program (FSRP) in West Africa with the aim of building resilience for climate adaptability and response to shocks that affect the food system in West Africa.
Chowberry participated in an advisory role as well as played a facilitating role with all key stakeholders via a 3-day virtual stakeholder workshop.
The four-day virtual stakeholder conference “Under the palaver tree: unpacking Food System Resilience in West Africa” took place from July 6-9, 2020 in the context of the project preparation of the upcoming Food System Resilience Program (FSRP). The FSRP is a regional flagship investment project led by ECOWAS, CILSS, CORAF, co-financed by the World Bank (WB).

Evoking the image of the palaver tree, the bilingual virtual stakeholder consultation offered an open space for participants from West African countries, regional bodies, development partners and representatives from the private sector, academia and the civil society to engage. The purpose of the event was to seek the participant’s feedback, ideas and proposals on how to tackle challenges of the West African Food System and – to present the current early stage design of the FSRP; – to identify regional priorities for the West African Food System that the FSRP could invest in; – to discuss opportunities to improve early stage design of the FSRP and strengthen resilience in project design; – to get to know each other, explore synergies and opportunities for collaboration with technical and financial partners; – to harvest local expert knowledge on the specific vulnerability context of West African food systems informing the Blueprint report and identify gaps for future analytical work to be conducted under the WB Advisory Services Analytic (ASA) Regional Food System Resilience in West Africa: Regional Flagship Initiative.