General objective

The overall objective of the retreat is to help facilitate the implementation and follow-up of the recommendations of the 13^th MDT meeting by the country offices and the FAO sub-regional office for West Africa, follow-up on the implementation of the recommendations of the 32^nd ARC and integrate new colleagues into the SFW Teams.

Specific objectives

• Review the recommendations from the 13th MDT meeting for common understanding and develop an action plan for their implementation;
• Review the recommendations of the 32nd Regional Conference for Africa (ARC22) and formulate measures for their implementation by the subregion and specifically by the countries;
• Identify priority actions, challenges and opportunities, mitigation actions for the implementation and follow-up of these recommendations at the sub-regional and country levels ;
• Propose a mechanism for monitoring the implementation of both recommendations of MDT13 and ARC32 including reflections on key issues to discuss during the MDT14 meeting;
• Build team spirit and collaboration within and between country offices and the sub-regional office for one SFW approach;
• Finalize the reflection on the sub-regional platform of technical skills to be set up for better use of the expertise available for SFW sub-region and propose a roadmap for its operationalization.

Expected results

• SFW sub-regional and country office staff have a common understanding of the recommendations of the 13th MDT meeting and an action plan is developed;
• The priority actions required at the sub-regional and country levels to implement the recommendations of the 13th MDT are identified;
• A mechanism for monitoring and reporting on the implementation of the recommendations of the 13^th MDT with a roadmap is available;
• The measures for the implementation of the ARC32 recommendations are formulated;
• The general framework of the sub-regional technical skills platform is defined and a roadmap for its operationalization is developed;

Team spirit is strengthened among SFW's sub-regional and country office staff through team-building exercises