Senegal – A Centre for Training and Assistance to Entrepreneurship was officially launched on Friday 27th November in Guédiawaye, on the outskirts of Dakar, by Senegal’s Director of the National Agency for the Promotion of Youth Employment (ANPEJ).

IOM Senegal was given free premises for the Centre in Guédiawaye – a town with a very high youth population, and high unemployment – through its partnership with ANPEJ.

The USD 300,000 project, coordinated by IOM Spain and IOM Senegal, was financed by the Caixa Foundation and the Spanish agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID). It aims to build the entrepreneurial capacities of youth and to finance projects set up by potential and returning migrants, in order to stem the flow of irregular migration and facilitate reintegration for returning migrants.

Some 16 women and 31 men, including several linked to Senegalese administrative institutions, have already benefitted from a Training of Trainers on entrepreneurship. They will further benefit from project support to organise trainings at the local level in five regions of Senegal, specifically targeted due to their high rate of migration.

Over a period of three months, these trainers will teach up to 600 young people the necessary skills and tools to develop and implement their own economic activity. According to the Director General of the ANPEJ, Amadou Lamine Dieng, based on statistics of the National Agency for Statistics and Demography, “42 per cent of job-seekers in Senegal suffer from a lack of skills linked to their training” based on statistics of the National Agency for Statistics and Demography, 42 per cent of job-seekers in Senegal suffer from a lack of skills linked to their training.

In collaboration with the ANPEJ, IOM Senegal selected 22 initiatives, instigated by young entrepreneurs, to be funded through the project, in diverse areas such as agriculture; arts and crafts; livestock farming and service providers, for a total sum of USD 53,000. The project aims to specifically target voluntary returning migrants in order to further support their efforts at reintegration.

In the framework of this project, a cooperation agreement was signed between IOM Senegal and the ANPEJ in June 2015. The aim of this partnership is to reinforce collaboration and cooperation between both agencies in the area of entrepreneurship.

“Through this collaboration, we hope to build further synergies for further development opportunities for Senegalese youth, in particular in high migration areas, in order to limit the negative consequences of uninformed irregular migration,” said IOM Senegal Head of Office Jo-Lind Roberts-Sene.

For further information please contact Aissata Ka at IOM Senegal, Tel : +221 77 579 09 65, Email : aka2@iom.int