Anti-poverty program in Burkina Faso: Louis Berger helps Millennium Challenge Corporation complete $480 million anti-poverty program in Burkina Faso
Louis Berger acting as the procurement agent for the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), recently marked the completion of the agency's $480 million poverty reduction program in Burkina Faso. As procurement agent for the program, Louis Berger oversaw the purchase and distribution of all goods and services, ensuring the program remained within budget. At the end 2014, after the Compact's closure period, Louis Berger reported a 99 percent Compact funds disbursement rate and had managed more than 500 procurement processes.
As part of MCC's five-year Burkina Faso Compact, the poverty reduction program aimed to spur economic growth by boosting agricultural production, improving livestock and financial management, enhancing access to domestic and international markets, and increasing the number of girls attending school. By the end of the Compact, MCC had made demonstrable progress on its measurement and evaluation criteria in the West African country, including:
Training of almost 10,000 farmers in advanced agricultural techniques.
Training of 700 judges in the management of land disputes
Immunization of more than 1.4 million cattle and poultry
Construction or modernization of 400 classrooms, and Graduation of more than 3,100 girls and almost 2,750 boys from the program.
"Due to the Compact's size and fixed implementation period, serving as the program's procurement agent proved to be a challenging undertaking," said Pascal Houdeau, Louis Berger's deputy general manager of operations for Western and Eastern Africa. "Nonetheless, the development outcomes in Burkina Faso are gratifying and could not have been achieved without an
effective procurement system in place."
Louis Berger has more than 50 years of experience in Africa and nearly 30 years of project implementation in Burkina Faso.