From Sassou Koffi B ETCHRI, Executive Director of the Blue Community IAMDES-Togo:
Everyone thinks that a development project is successful when it achieves its goals. We believe that the real test begins when the funding stops.
At first glance, restoring a mangrove, forming a community, or creating an economic activity may seem like three different actions. However, in a territory, these realities are deeply linked.
When ecosystems degrade, resources become scarcer. When incomes decrease, the pressure on natural resources can increase.
When skills, funding or governance structures disappear at the end of a project, the gains become fragile.
It is precisely this logic that IAMDES-Togo wants to rethink.
Around Lake Zowla, our 2026–2035 programme combines biodiversity restoration, adaptation to climate change, economic inclusion, local scientific research, community governance and autonomy of local structures. These dimensions are not treated as independent problems, but as components of the same territory.
Our ambition is therefore not only to carry out projects. It is to build with communities capacities, knowledge, economic mechanisms and governance structures capable of continuing to function over time.
The vision carried out by IAMDES-Togo thus aims for more resilient and autonomous riparian communities, capable of actively participating in the sustainable management of their territory.
This LinkedIn page will be the space where we share the field, experiences, data, solutions tested, lessons learned, and partnerships built around this vision.
Because for us, local development is not just about intervening in a territory. It consists of gradually giving it the means to continue without us.
Let’s do things differently than usual.
In your opinion, what should be the real indicator of the success of a development project: the results obtained during its financing… Or what continues to exist several years later?
