Incatema completes its Technical Assistance to the EU for monitoring and assessment of the BAM (Banana Accompanying Measures) programme

19 February, 2021

Incatema Consulting & Engineering has completed the programme of Technical Assistance to the EU for monitoring and assessment of the BAM (Banana Accompanying Measures) programme following a 7-year duration. During this period, the company has continuously monitored execution of the programmed activities by each beneficiary country, which has required an overall investment of 190 million Euros from European Union Cooperation.

To this effect, a monitoring system specifically adapted to the reality of each beneficiary country was developed, which has allowed the programme’s managers, both on a national and global scale, to obtain reliable information on the level of progress in the execution of the programmed activities, along with the results achieved and the sustainability of same.

Additionally, the technical assistance has provided specific support measures required by the beneficiaries themselves, such as:

• Strategy for the implantation of public-private partnerships for the diversification of production on small Caribbean islands.
• Development of specific roadmaps for the diversification of production on each island.
• Creation of an internal bulletin to communicate results and success stories among the programme’s beneficiary countries.
• Comparative study of the competitiveness of the value chain of the beneficiary countries with their main competitor markets.
• Celebration in December 2016 in Brussels of a seminar to share experiences and success stories with the participation of the 10 beneficiary countries. This seminar allowed collaborative bonds to be created between the beneficiary countries to improve execution of the activities in the final phase of the programme.
• Development of specific management tools for the national authorities of Cameroon and Ivory Coast.
• Execution of the programme’s impact assessment after execution of the financed projects was completed.

  Continuous learning to foster sustainability

  This technical assistance has not been limited therefore to analytical data gathering of the programmes, but rather has promoted continuous learning and the exchange of experiences both at the level of the management teams and from the technical point of view to optimise the execution of the financed development and diversification projects for the banana sector.

  The programme of Banana Accompanying Measures (BAM) started out in January 2014 with the objective of compensating small banana producers in Africa and the Caribbean for the loss of competitiveness brought about by the liberalisation of the international banana trade, as a result of negotiations within the World Trade Organisation (WTO). These agreements favour the exports of major producers of the ACP (Africa, Caribbean and Pacific), to the detriment of smaller producers, as we previously reported here.