Technical Advisory Mission to Togo

Technical Advisory Mission to Togo, 13 to 17 July 2009

Executive Summary

Togo is prone to frequent floods and droughts. Disasters triggered by certain environmental conditions, such as locust plagues, also contribute to endangering the food security of the local population. In addition, vector borne diseases and epidemics of weather- and climate-sensitive infectious diseases, including malaria, meningitis, and cholera, cause massive disruption to societies and put a heavy burden on national health systems.

Small countries in Africa, like Togo, often face challenge in access and use of spacebased information for disaster management due to the lack of expertise, technical capacity and scientific approaches towards disaster management. It is the mandate of UN-SPIDER to support member states that are in need to improve their access.

In March 2009, the Government of Togo requested a UN-SPIDER technical advisory mission to assess the existing use of space-based technology and information for disaster management and emergency response in Togo. Specifically, the mission was requested to identify potential areas where space-based technology and information could play a greater role, and propose recommendations how to improve Togo's access to and the use of space-based technology and information.

The Ministry of Environment and Forest Resources took a lead in organising the UNSPIDER mission. More than 30 national organisations from Togo were invited to participate at this mission including numerous governmental organisations, NGOs as well as educational institutions related to disaster management. The Mission team consisting of experts from UN-SPIDER, UNOCHA, WHO, NASRDA, RECTAS and CRASTE visited Lome from 13th July to 17th July 2009. During an initial stakeholders workshop the mission team worked for three days with the entire group of participants. Subsequently, the team also visited key UN and Government Institution with primary functions in disaster management.

The observations of the mission team and preliminary results were presented during a debriefing meeting with the Minister of Environment.

Major achievements of the mission are summarised below as following:

  • The presence of CRASTE, RECTAS and NASRDA strengthened the links between Togo and these regional organizations which finally will help the country to develop capacity building strategies by adopting the long-term advisory support.
  • The mission brought together various national organizations involved in disaster management
  • The mission generated awareness amongst the organizations for collective efforts towards disaster management
  • The mission pointed out the needs to update the national disaster management plan with emphasis on space-based technology/information. Since the government is in the process of recruiting international consultants for reviewing disaster management plans, the UN-SPIDER intervention was just in time and will provide further inputs to those consultants as required.
  • A National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) does not exist in the country. Using space-based information has limitations in absence of such a data structure. The UN-SPIDER mission will boost efforts of the government to create a respective NSDI.
  • Visits to heads of UN organizations were made with the purpose to convey that the mandate of UN-SPIDER compliments their efforts in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and that these organizations should support the government to implement the recommendations of UN-SPIDER.

The mission was successful to bring all main actors in the government together to discuss important issues related to disaster management and use of space-based information. Thus, observations made by the mission team share common concerns of the national counterparts. The report presents recommendation by the UN-SPIDER mission team based on those observations, discussions with individual authorities of UN bodies in the country and governmental agencies, visits to several institutions, presentations by different institutions and working group discussions involving multiple institutions.

The recommendations are presented in three parts namely:

  • data sharing and information management
  • capacity building and
  • disaster management plans and policies.

The mission represents a first step towards establishing long-term cooperation between the Togolese Government and UN-SPIDER to establish benefits of space-based technology and information within all stages of disaster management.

Processed by natalie.epler on Oct 28th 2009