Burkina Faso/Integration: WAEMU launches regional agricultural information system (SIAR)

UEMOA officially launched the regional agricultural information system (SIAR) this Friday, November 4, 2022, in Ouagadougou. The RAIS is a community tool for steering national and regional agricultural policies in the WAEMU area.

This will allow the capitalization of agricultural information from the Member States in order to generate reliable information necessary for decision making in the framework of the steering of the agricultural policy of the Union. Specifically, it will promote, in the first place, the storage and organization of data and information on the agricultural sector, food security and nutrition. In addition, to facilitate the output of agricultural and food security data and information in several formats. Finally, to provide open access to data and information on the agricultural sector.

The beneficiaries of the SIAR are: sub-regional institutions (UEMOA, ECOWAS, CILSS), member states of the union, agricultural stakeholders and regional farmers' organizations. "Information is crucial in all areas, especially in agriculture, which is of vital socio-economic importance in our countries. The SIAR will be a steering tool, a decision-making aid for the authorities in areas such as: food security, production in the agricultural sectors and markets. This is an important step for our zone, because it will enable us to be better equipped to deal with the problems facing our populations," said Iba Mar Oularé, Director of the Cabinet of the Commission President.

It should be noted that the institutional organization of the SIAR includes two branches. First, the monitoring and orientation committee which is in charge of steering the animation. Secondly, the national SIAR framework, which is set up by the member states to coordinate the activities of animation, data loading on the SIAR and the processing of information from SIAR data.

According to the head of the Commission's agriculture department, Amadou Mbogj, "the platform allows you to collect all the information on the agricultural sectors in general, on production, on areas, inputs, harvests, products, agricultural markets, prices, and storage. It will also allow us to see the price differentials that may exist between one country and another in order to encourage distributors to move their stocks. This will allow to supply the deficit areas" he underlined. The public has access to this system set up by the WAEMU. Click here to access: https://siar.uemoa.int

Source: lefaso.net