afrol News, 14 April - The conflict-ridden Casamance province of southern Senegal is slowly returning to peace. As the Casamance independence struggle is ending, development investments are streaming into the potentially rich province. Senegalese authorities and UN agencies have started investing in infrastructure, social services and local businesses, while displaced farmers are returning to their land.

Peace is slowly returning to the Casamance after 22 years of low-scale civil warfare between the central government and the rebel Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC). A peace accord was signed in 2001 between Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade and MFDC leader Augustin Diamacoune Senghor and last year, Sidi Badj, the last separatist leader halting the peace process, died. Armed incidents still occur, but seldom.

An estimated 15,000 internally displaced people and refugees are in the process of returning to the lands they once cultivated and to the Casamance capital, Ziguinchor. Reconstruction is on its way. Only the forested zones along the border with Guinea-Bissau still remain unsafe due to the last remaining MFDC militants and heavy mining.

The Casamance is the Senegalese province richest on natural resources. In additional to its vast tourism potential - it used to be West Africa's largest destination - the region is also the most fertile in Senegal and could easily feed much of northern Senegal. The province's development has however been hampered by lack of investments from Dakar and destructions and divestment due to the fighting.

Now, the central government is reinvesting in the tourism and agriculture sectors, giving special weight to infrastructure. The famous luxury tourist resort Cap Skiring at Casamance's short coastline is to be improved after years of decay and Dakar is planning a large increase of the cultivated area in the province.

Today, also the UN's development agency, UNDP, reported its enhanced return to the Casamance. UNDP is now extending its US$ 4.5 million Senegal programme to reduce poverty to the region. It thereby becomes the first UN agency to fully extend its programmes to the province after the civil war.

Based in Ziguinchor, the UNDP launches an initiative that is to "help communities build health clinics, schools, roads and other vital public works, in cooperation with other donors," the agency said today. It is also to provide small loans to help start or expand local businesses and promote other activities to create jobs and protect the environment in the region.

- We hope that other United Nations and donor agencies will follow lead of UNDP, said Moustapha Diedhiou of UNDP Ziguinchor. UNDP's intervention was intended to signal to the government, local communities and development partners that development activities "can be carried out in Casamance without waiting for a formal peace agreement to be signed," the agency added.

Local and regional elected officials hailed the step, given that lack of security almost completely halted economic development programmes supported by Senegal's international partners. Only the World Food Programme, UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and UNICEF have maintained a low-scale presence there.

- The branch is a new instrument in support of peace, and the sense of abandonment that we have long felt has lifted because UNDP is giving a strong signal in support of other donors returning to our region, said Mr Diedhiou.

Awa Guèye Kebe, Senegalese Minister of Family and Social Development, expressed the same sentiment and said that it would have been "unacceptable" not to include Casamance in the efforts to reduce poverty. The UNDP added that it hoped its activities would "help consolidate the peace process" and move towards such a formal peace agreement.

The UN's formal poverty reduction initiative is expected to help mobilise funds for a larger economic and social revival programme for the region, coordinated by UNDP and the European Union. Most international donors only get involved in post-conflict regions after agencies such as UNDP haw opened the doors to anti-poverty initiatives.

Initiatives that have been launched in Casamance so far, such as the UNHCR's programme to assist returning refugees, have hardly found foreign donors. The refugee agency earlier this year noted that donors were reluctant to provide aid to Casamance until peace is certain. They fear that they will rebuild villages only to have them destroyed again by renewed conflict.

By staff writer

© afrol News

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