The West African Food System Resilience Programme (PRSA) intends to raise its profile among stakeholders and disseminate its results for greater impact. To achieve this, and taking into account the diversity and multiplicity of stakeholders and partners, the programme has just validated its communication strategy and plan and knowledge management, from 10 to 12 July in Niamey.
In order to facilitate the implementation of the PRSA, communication is at the heart of its actions and contributes to the achievement of the Project's objectives. For this reason, the development and implementation of a communications strategy and plan are an integral part of the overall strategy for implementing the PRSA.
For 3 days, PRSA communication and monitoring-evaluation experts met to finalise the programme's communication strategy on the basis of the provisional version that had been drawn up with the involvement of all stakeholders and partners. As a reminder, a group of experts made up of communication managers from the institutions implementing the PRSA and from the countries, worked on collecting information on communication needs, categorising stakeholders and partners, analysing communication issues and problems in West Africa in relation to climate change, agro-ecology, regional trade facilitation, etc. Based on the data collected, the draft communication strategy and plan were drawn up.
All sections of the draft documents were examined to improve their content before being validated.
In addition, the draft PRSA graphic charter was examined to provide the programme with a visibility manual. The communication officers were made aware of the need to set up Twitter and Facebook pages and accounts to communicate results and raise the profile of the PRSA. Each communications specialist will draw up a detailed communications plan to facilitate implementation of the communications strategy in the field.
The PRSA is now in its second year of field operations, and the communication and visibility manuals that have just been approved will make a major contribution not only to raising awareness of the programme but also to better disseminating its results.
