Activities

Signing of the MoUs and approval of the action plans
By the second semester 2006, five countries had signed their MoU’s with AU/IBAR and had their respective action plans approved - Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, Niger and Chad. Togo signed in February 2007. The third quarter of 2007 saw the signing by Mali, Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria and Djibouti.

They each received a first advance of 168 750 US$ to start their programme while Mali received 100 000 US$ only.

Sudan signed on 18 August 2008 and the first tranche disbursement of the reallocated grant is being processed by ADB.

Chinese Technical Assistance
Under the new CHINA-AFRICA partnership, and considering that China experienced a HPAI epidemic caused by H5N1 in 2004, AU/IBAR received an expert mission whose objectives were

• To develop recommendations for the setup of an adequate epidemiological surveillance network.

• To improve the capacity building of African national laboratories in the early diagnosis techniques of the disease.

• To train African experts involved in the prevention and control of HPAI.

This mission lasted 6 months (30 March - 29 September 2007). The experts were divided into two teams

• West Africa (Benin, Ghana, Togo and Mali)
• Eastern Africa (Djibouti, Kenya, and Sudan)

Chinese TA report