State-Employers Agreement in Ziguinchor: The State relies on cooperatives to boost employment and the social economy

In Ziguinchor, social and solidarity economy actors are now being encouraged to take greater ownership of the National State-Employers Convention. Through an awareness-raising session combined with a field visit to the Agro-Zig cooperative, the Directorate of Employment and the International Labour Organization (ILO) highlighted the opportunities this mechanism offers for strengthening cooperative capacities and supporting their development.

The State of Senegal intends to make the National State-Employers Convention a strategic lever for employment, as well as for strengthening cooperatives and social and solidarity-based enterprises. It is within this framework that an awareness-raising mission was organized in Ziguinchor by the Directorate of Employment, in partnership with the International Labour Organization (ILO), focusing on the opportunities offered by this instrument to local productive organizations.

The meeting took place at the Agro-Zig cooperative, a regional leader in women-led agri-food processing. It brought together institutional representatives, technical partners, and cooperative members who came to learn about available support mechanisms.

According to Cheikh Amadou Abdoul Guèye, Director of Employment at the Ministry of Employment, Vocational and Technical Training, this initiative is a continuation of the work already carried out by the International Labour Organization through the ADIGEF project. This program has notably enabled the creation, structuring, and organizational strengthening of several cooperatives in the region.

Today, the ambition is to take a further step by providing them with qualified human resources capable of supporting their growth. Through the State-Employers Agreement, cooperatives can benefit from profiles tailored to their needs under advantageous financial conditions thanks to a cost-sharing system with the State.

For the authorities, this support is particularly relevant for organizations like Agro-Zig, which operate across the entire value chain, from processing to marketing agricultural products. The program aims to strengthen their professionalization, productivity, and capacity to create more jobs.

The awareness campaign in Ziguinchor also aims to popularize a mechanism that remains unfamiliar to many stakeholders on the ground. Following discussions with technical services, the decision was made to directly engage with the beneficiaries to explain to them, in concrete terms, how to access this opportunity.

This initiative received the support of the International Labour Organization, which is strongly committed to promoting the social and solidarity economy in Casamance. For Samira Daoud, director of the ILO office for West Africa based in Dakar, the Agro-Zig cooperative perfectly illustrates the results that a well-structured collective organization can produce.

She points out that the ILO played a crucial role in the creation of this cooperative by supporting women entrepreneurs who previously operated in a scattered fashion. Bringing these women together within a single entity enabled them to pool their skills, strengthen their economic power, and improve their development prospects.

Beyond the creation of the cooperative, support continued in several strategic areas, including governance, agri-food processing, and product marketing. The visit to Ziguinchor thus served to assess the progress made while identifying the remaining challenges.

Despite the encouraging results recorded, the cooperative's managers continue to face several constraints, including the need for specialized technical skills, improved management capabilities, and enhanced competitiveness in the markets.

It is precisely to meet these needs that the State-Employers Convention appears as a complementary tool to the efforts already undertaken by development partners. By facilitating access to a skilled workforce, it offers cooperatives the opportunity to consolidate their achievements and accelerate their expansion.

Through this awareness campaign, the State and the ILO share a common ambition: to make cooperatives key players in territorial development, job creation, and women's economic empowerment. In Ziguinchor, the message is unequivocal: the future of the social and solidarity economy depends on better mobilization of public mechanisms capable of transforming local initiatives into genuine engines of sustainable growth.