March 18, 2025
BudgIT Senegal, with support from the World Resources Institute (WRI), organized a community engagement workshop at the EluPaay Hotel in Ziguinchor on March 18, 2025, as part of its Green Project Accountability Project, which aims to equip citizens with clear, accessible information on climate finance in agriculture, energy, water, and sanitation sectors while empowering them to actively track spending, monitor project implementation, and advocate for improved service delivery. With approximately 60 attendees, including citizens and community leaders, the event emphasized the importance of citizen participation in public finance management to address environmental issues and explored existing government capital projects for the community. The main stakeholders included local environmental protection associations, youth and women’s organizations, local authorities represented by the deputy mayor, water and forestry representatives, disabled people’s associations, teachers, schoolchildren and local media.
The meeting aimed to provide the citizens of Ziguinchor with clear and accessible information regarding climate financing in the agriculture, energy, water, and sanitation sectors. Furthermore, the meeting focused on building their capacity to monitor allocations from the Green Climate Fund and the green budget. This would empower them to hold their authorities accountable and ensure that these funds are effectively directed toward combating climate change and improving services.
At the beginning of the meeting, Aminata Diop, Project Manager at BudgIT, distributed pamphlets on the 2024 simplified green budget and presented explanatory videos in both French and English. The aim was to raise public awareness about specific allocations for environmental projects in the community. The videos, each lasting 4 and 2 minutes, helped the public understand how public resources are allocated and how they can influence decision-making processes to ensure that environmental priorities are better considered.
El Hadj Amadou Samb, our Country Lead, created working groups to address climate change issues affecting Ziguinchor and explore potential solutions. Participants actively shared their concerns and offered valuable suggestions during the discussions. Some significant challenges identified included beach erosion, rising sea levels, and the depletion of natural resources linked to mangroves. The loss of these wetlands directly impacts the local population, particularly women and young people who rely on these ecosystems for their livelihoods, such as fishing and harvesting forest products.
Participants voiced several climate change challenges they currently face. “We observe that the seasons are no longer predictable as they used to be, making farming very difficult and directly affecting our food security,” stressed Madame Lecaer, president of the Women’s Association for Peace in Casamance. Moussa, a young painter and supporter of Ziguinchor’s development, added, “Mangroves are gradually disappearing due to salinization and excessive logging, even though they protected us from floods and provided refuge for fish.”
To counter these impacts, participants proposed several practical solutions tailored to local realities. Suggestions included reforesting mangroves, implementing climate-resilient farming techniques, and promoting renewable energy sources, such as solar power, to reduce reliance on local natural resources and prevent further environmental degradation. Additionally, the need to strengthen infrastructure to protect coastal areas from erosion was emphasized, aligning with the priorities outlined in the green budget. They also highlighted the importance of being involved in the public budget-making process to propose critical projects that could mitigate the effects of climate change in the community.
Aminata Laye Diop
Junior Project Officer at BudgIT Senegal