Togo

Togo’s education system is faced with strong population growth and is struggling to provide equal access to high-quality education for all. The vocational training system is inadequate and seriously deteriorated. It is unable to provide a response to the challenges of unemployment among Togolese youth and to business needs.

AFD has made human capital development a priority for its action in Togo. The aim is to allow each student to achieve their potential and the country to rely on a competent and skilled labor force:

• We are supporting the secondary school reform in order to reduce territorial and gender inequalities in access to secondary education, while improving the quality of teaching;
• We are supporting the modernization of vocational training by ensuring the sustainability of the activities of the Industry Training Center in Lomé and assisting all agricultural and training centers in Togo.

Togo is highly dependent on its neighbors for energy and is struggling to meet constantly growing domestic demand. The country has called on the international community to develop its energy. AFD has consequently made a long-term commitment in the energy sector.

It is now focusing its support on improving access to energy for people and economic activities in terms of quality and quantity. This entails increasing and diversifying sources of generation and extending distribution grids. Two projects have been launched:

• The extension of Lomé’s power grid, in particular in peri-urban areas, cofinanced with the European Union and KfW. The objectives: secure and strengthen power systems, reduce the divide and develop peri-urban areas, develop the renewable energy generation capacity and increase access to electricity. 
• The project to develop the hydropower potential of the Sarakawa site, which is still under study. It provides for the construction of a 24 MW hydropower plant and the transmission of the energy produced. 29 municipalities are expected to benefit from electricity.

Rapid urbanization exacerbates difficulties to access water and sanitation. Lomé, the capital, is hit by recurrent flooding. It suffers from the fact that there is no collective sanitation system and from poor household waste management. The wet regions along the coastline in turn suffer from poor maintenance and a lack of upkeep of the lagoons.

AFD supports projects for drinking water supply, stormwater drainage and solid waste management:

• With the European Union, we are cofinancing the construction of a landfill and the development of a 4th lake for stormwater drainage. It will protect 300,000 people from flooding and will provide them with healthier living conditions;
• We are helping improve the management of the waste sector in Greater Lomé and build the administrative and financial capacities of the municipality;
• We are cofinancing, again with the European Union, two projects to improve the water supply in the City of Lomé with three objectives: improve the level of service of the water authority, rehabilitate damaged urban networks and increase the drinking water production capacity by about 30%.

AFD Group is also a partner for Togo’s financial institutions and promotes the development of a green finance market.

We are currently conducting a banking intermediation activity in partnership with private or regional banks, which benefit from credit lines (regional financing via the West African Development Bank, Sunref, a regional energy efficiency project with Orabank), guarantees (ARIZ) and grants.

We have also assisted growth in the microfinance sector (WAGES and FUCEC), by developing information systems and implementing new financial products (support for agricultural SMEs and microcredits). The public-private partnership alongside Proparco, AFD’s private sector arm, is another area of operation. For example, this financing method has been used for the construction of the container terminal of the Port of Lomé, which has reduced the transit time for goods and facilitated regional trade.