On 17 June 2020, ESSFI attended the webinar organised by the Network of Actors and Territorial Collectivities for the Social and Solidarity Economy in Senegal (RACTES), on the theme "RESILIENCE CAPACITIES OF ACTORS IN THE SOCIAL AND SOLIDARITY ECONOMY FACED WITH COVID19 ". This webinar is the first in a series on the challenges and issues of post-Covid19 SSE. The speakers were Mor Diakhaté from Alphadev, Omar Sy from the NGO Ndeyi jirim, Riccardo Carlotti from the Etimos foundation, Aminata Diop Samb from the Municipal Development and Solidarity Fund (Fodem), Oumou Ngom from the Cesiri women's network, Adama Soumaré from WIEGO, Maïmouna Diop Paye from the Union of Women Entrepreneurs (UFCE), and Abdoul Aziz Wade from W&L.
While the pandemic is having an impact on all organizations, the informal sector and more broadly the entities of the social and solidarity economy have been particularly affected, with most of them finding themselves without income.
However, the panellists presented the actions and initiatives implemented by their respective organisations to deal with them, thus demonstrating the SSE's capacity to adapt in the face of an unprecedented crisis. Among the generalized approaches are: mobilization around the manufacture of masks, soaps and hydroalcoholic gel, distribution of sanitary and food kits to the most vulnerable populations (young girls, women working in the informal sector or even talibé children in daaras), and sometimes the setting up of solidarity funds for families and social and cultural structures in difficulty. Many have also carried out awareness and prevention campaigns through the distribution of flyers and posters, but also through training in barrier gestures.
The pandemic has made more flagrant the difficulties encountered by SSE in a context where there is no legal framework, no unitary framework that brings together all the actors of the informal sector, and no space for dialogue between SSE actors and the Senegalese authorities. The organisations all plead for the creation of these frameworks. They also plead for the training of SSE actors in collective bargaining and the mastery of the legal environment in order to be able to obtain official and concrete agreements from the State. Training in crisis prevention and management, the setting up of an emergency aid fund by the State to support SSE organisations, the creation of SSE support and accompaniment units in the communes, and the inclusion of SSE in the Economic and Social Resilience Programme are all areas of reflection raised during this webinar from the perspective of the post-Covid world19.
Find the complete webinar here.
