Recently, I have been rather tired to write on the blog. It’s only a two hour difference but I can feel it. Extensive flying this year is catching up with me.

On Monday evening we had our Welcome dinner with our Union partners from Burundi (FNTT-SI), the delegation of Burkina Faso (CSB) and Senegal (CNTS). Our national secretary of the CGSLB/ACLVB - Belgian Liberal Trade Union joined us on this trip. It is a very important conference as we are renewing our partnership agreements lasting till 2021, and at the same time closing the program that lasted up until 2016. After a lovely dinner, (I ordered my favorite African beef brochette with spicy peppers) and crawled to bed; ready for the real work.

Tuesday morning we meet our South African partners as they weren’t present at the welcome dinner. They were beyond tired from a long travel with multiple stops from Johannesburg to Ouagadougou. Many times, it is easier to travel within Africa by flying to Brussels and then taking an SN Brussels flight back to Africa. It is ridiculous but connecting flights within the continent aren’t easy.

Olivier Valentin (National Secretary of ACLVB/CGSLB & President of MSI) and Vera Dos Santos - Department Head welcomed everyone to the conference. We are delighted to receive the Development Cooperation Delegate of the Belgian Embassy (Mrs. Meersman). She pointed out that it was very important for her to be at our conference as it is has been ten years since the development cooperation returned to Burkina Faso (BTC). Mrs Meersman was happy to see that the conference consisted of mostly women as gender is important on the Belgian Development Cooperation agenda.

My colleague Maresa Le Roux, (originally from South Africa) and already more than ten years on the program, explained the changes in the new development program by the Belgian Minister of Development Aid. Furthermore, Vera continued to give feedback by external auditors HIVA attached to the University of Leuven of the results of the last program. The entire day covered new program versus old program and results. Next steps were to discuss what can be changed to improve the conditions of the informal laborers.

Maybe in order to understand, I have to go some background of what we actually do. MSI/BIS, an independent non profit making organization within the structure of the Belgian Liberal Trade Union, has been given the tasks and funds of the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Development aid to improve the capacity of the unions, enhance dialogue and support, coach, guide and educate the workers of the informal economy. On top of that, we aim to
enhance South – South Cooperation on the recommendation 204 of the International Labour Union (ILO) on transforming the informal economy to the formal economy. Our partners were given some time to come up with new thoughts on the recommendations of the external consultants.

Recommendation 1 : capacity building meets to be more fit for purpose meaning that not enough attention is paid to the process of the existing organisations and the 5C needs to be used better.

Recommendation 2 : structure the informal economy better.

Recommendation 3 : Better follow up if activities need to be done and TUDEP model needs to be used better.

Recommendation 4 : Sustainaibility; most of our partner unions aren’t financially sustainable yet so a strategy needs to be developed in order to make these unions more sustainable.

We close our meeting at 5 pm and have two hours to relax to close the evening with an amusing dinner in the hotel.

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