Our Senegal office

Luxembourg Cooperation's activities in Senegal began in 1990 with the rehabilitation and extension of health facilities at Saint-Louis hospital. Similarly, the first Indicative Cooperation Programme (ICP) between the Republic of Senegal and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, signed in January 2003, focused on the Dakar - Saint-Louis geographical axis.

The sectors initially addressed were education and human resources training, health and access to drinking water and sanitation. Since then, a number of other programmes have been carried out in the context of ICPs II and III, which ran from 2007 to 2011 and 2012 to 2016 respectively, each time expanding the geographical areas of intervention.

The ICP IV between the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the Republic of Senegal was signed in December 2018 for a period of five years and its implementation will be extended until December 2025. Within the framework of ICP IV, the Senegal Office supervises bilateral development programmes in two priority sectors, with a common thread of capacity building:

• health and social protection; and
• vocational and technical training and employability.

All of these programmes are strongly geared towards the territorialisation of public policies on the one hand, and support for reforms to modernise public administration and the harmonised public finance framework of the West African Economic and Monetary Union on the other. The aim of these initiatives is to achieve lasting improvements in the quality of public management and the services provided to the public. In addition to these areas, the programme also addresses cross-cutting themes such as gender and the environment. In particular, all the programmes propose to make the most of existing structures and frameworks, both at national and regional level, in steering and implementing actions with a view to greater alignment with national policies, such as Vision Senegal 2050, in accordance with the Paris Declaration.

The programmes are implemented through three channels: national execution via the budgeted aid instrument, the LuxDev agency and the operational partnership agreements. National execution is not, however, limited to one execution modality but implies, for the actors, full ownership and control of all processes from planning to reporting.

The funds allocated to the bilateral programme by the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg are aimed at sectoral support, capacity building and support for civil society.

In terms of geographical coverage, the activities implemented cover seven regions in the North and Centre of Senegal and the region of Ziguinchor in the South in the health sector.

In addition to ICP IV, LuxDev, together with other European implementing agencies, is coordinating and implementing the FIT! Senegal Initiative in the vocational and technical training sector, as part of a Team Europe approach to help Senegal draw a legacy from the organisation of the 2026 Youth Olympic Games, the first Olympic event to be held in Africa.

Another Team Europe project currently underway in Senegal is the VET Toolbox, a partnership between several European agencies: Enabel, British Council, GIZ, Expertise France and LuxDev. The initiative promotes inclusive, demand-led education and vocational training, in particular by promoting co-constructed training courses between public training centres and private companies. This initiative is funded by the European Union and the German government.

In addition, the country office oversees other operations arising from global initiatives in support of the private sector, university cooperation, the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and other support for food security.