Bouaké validates its Action Plan for Access to Energy and Climate (SEACAP) in the presence of 200+ guests

Since January 2017, the Municipality of Bouaké has made a commitment to draft an action plan in favor of access to energy and climate within the framework of the Covenant of Mayors in Sub-Saharan Africa (CoM SSA). After three years of the mobilization of civil society, supported by the mayor of the commune, Bouaké is amongst the first African cities to validate its SEACAP from the political standpoint.

A validation workshop attracting participants from across West Africa

The political validation workshop took place on December 9 and 10, 2019 at the Town Hall of Bouaké, under the chairmanship of Nicolas Djibo, mayor of the commune and in the presence of over 200 people including elected officials from the town hall, representatives of civil society, the project’s technical team, mayors and experts from the network of secondary cities from the WAEMU area representing the following countries: Côte d’Ivoire, Niger, Mali, Burkina-Faso, Benin, Togo, and Senegal (see article on the network of secondary cities of the WAEMU area attending a workshop in Bouaké ).

High-level discussion panels held in the margins of the validation workshop

In parallel with the validation ceremony, high-level panels were organized, one dealing with the experience and actions of African cities in the field of climate change and the second dealing with access to funding for the implementation of projects.

The panels brought together both mayors and political representatives, such as Bourahima SANOU, mayor of Bobo-Dioulasso, Fernand YAPI, representative of the mayor of Cocody, Rabé Souleymane DANON, representative of the mayor of San-Pedro and also technicians such as Célestin DJE, representing the Green Economy Directorate, and Aristide GAHIE, expert in urban mobility at the BNEDT (National Office for Technical and Development Studies).

Validation of a climate action plan with ambitious goals

The workshop made it possible to recall the results of the energy and climate diagnosis (ECD), as well as the energy and climate scenarios carried out by an expert whose services are being used by the municipality since 2018. Based on this data, the city of Bouaké has set ambitious targets and is committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 38% by 2030, as well as implementing innovative measures in the area of ​​adaptation.

Next step: technical validation of the climate action plan by European partners

The technical partners (ICLEI Africa and ENDA) visited Abidjan during the week of 10 December 2019 to support the technical team of the Bouaké project finalize the technical aspects of the climate action plan. The goal now is to list all the data collected since the start of the planning process so that they can be validated by the Science and Research service of the European Commission (Joint Research Center). The submission of the technical framework, as a prerequisite for the final validation of Bouaké’s SEACAP, should take place before the end of February 2020, which would definitively allow Bouaké to be one of the first African cities to validate, both technically and politically, its climate action plan.