The USAID West Africa Regional Mission and USAID/Senegal and its Sahel Regional Office are pleased to share our joint Regional Development Cooperation Strategy (RDCS) for fiscal years 2020 through 2025. The RDCS complements bilateral USAID Country Development Cooperation Strategies and U.S. Embassy Integrated Country Strategies for the 21-country sub-region. As USAID regional platforms, we play a critical role in supporting USAID bilateral operating units and U.S. Embassies by providing programmatic and support services as part of the collective U.S. government (USG) effort to advance self-reliance in the sub-region.
Our approach to programmatic services considers that West Africa’s diverse nations are connected by shared development opportunities and challenges, many of which are transboundary in nature or best approached collectively. Cooperation on such shared issues is seen as vital to self-reliance by West African nations, who believe that they are stronger together. West Africa’s empowered and active regional institutions provide logical partners to advance collective action on such shared issues. As we deliver our programmatic services at the local, national, and regional levels, we will engage with these institutions to leverage the benefits of that collective action to complement the much larger USG bilateral programming in West Africa.
The second, equally important component of our Platforms’ mandate is to deliver support services and oversight to USAID programming in 16 countries where there is no full-service USAID mission. Here, we share responsibility for providing procurement, financial, administrative management, and legal services while overseeing bilateral programs in countries with limited or no USAID presence. Our Platforms also serve as USAID training centers and convene several communities of practice around development issues.
Our joint RDCS seeks to meet the 21st-century challenges that West Africa faces by delivering programmatic and support services across the sub-region to our bilateral USAID and USG clients. It is our goal that through strong collaboration with these clients and in working by, with, and through our regional, national, and local West African partners, we increase inclusive social and economic development in a more resilient, democratic, integrated West Africa.
Daniel Moore, USAID/West Africa Mission Director
Peter Trenchard, USAID/Senegal Mission Director
