The Hanns-Seidel-Foundation West Africa is currently undertaking projects in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Togo. In 2012, the project country portfolio will be further extended to include Mali and Niger.

The overall objective of the Hanns-Seidel-Foundation in West Africa is to contribute to decentralisation, democratisation and conflict prevention. The main target group is the civil society of the project countries. Through capacity building workshops, trainings and information exchange platforms the civil society is empowered for a greater participation in political, social and economic processes. The Hanns-Seidel-Foundation supports local partners in their efforts to realise such greater inclusion of the civil society on the national, regional and local level. One of the primary tools is civic education, enabling society to claim basic elements including transparency, integrity and democratic behaviour to be part of the policy making processes of their countries.

On the West African regional level, the Hanns-Seidel-Foundation has two main projects.

Firstly, the foundation supports the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM). The Hanns-Seidel-Foundation organizes regional exchange of information between the project countries. As the APRM process is at different stages in the respective project countries, regional exchange allows for a learning platform and an enhancement of spill-over effects. Ghana’s successfully undertaken APRM process may thereby serve as a model and a guiding tool for the APRM process implementation in the other project countries.

The second project, to enhance public administrative structures of the project countries, is still in the pipeline. Regional platforms of dialogue between experts of the judiciaries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, Niger and Togo are being planned. Meetings are to be held regularly to exchange information and promote spill-over effects. This is aimed at enhancing the understanding of each other’s judicial laws, regulations and practises. The six countries will discuss relevant subject areas and prioritize six. Each country’s judiciary is then to develop one area further. The project therefore allows for the identification of best practises, while the adaption of such into one’s own system may be stimulated, thus benefiting each participating country’s civil society.

Concerning the work and projects undertaken on the national and local level, please refer to each country’s specific website: Ghana, Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger.

 

Foreign Scholarships - Scholarships for foreign postgraduates and academics

For the Hanns Seidel Foundation, assisting young and highly qualified foreign academics, especially from Third World countries, is an investment in the future with the aim of enabling the trained experts to play their part in the independent further development of their home countries so as to turn these into politically stable and economically strong partners for the entire world. The intention is to avoid conflicts between developing countries themselves and between developing countries and industrial nations and to play a role in paving the way to a peaceful coexistence of all nations on Earth on a political, economic and social level. more...