» ELO chaired the EBCAM - European Business Council
for Africa and the Mediterranean meetings in Brussels
in October 9 and 10

Under the presidency of ELO, through its Executive President Mr. Francisco Mantero, EBCAM held in Brussels on October 9 and 10 their Troika and Plenary meetings.

After the meetings it was signed between EBCAM and CDE – The Centre for the Development of Entreprise a Cooperation framework Agreement.

At the signature of the above mentioned Agreement were presents: all the members of EBCAM, the Director of CDE, Mr. Hamed Sow and Mr. Jean-Marie Delchambre CDE’s, EU Institution /Network, Mr. Ferdinand Nyabenda, Assistant Secretary General of the ACP Countries, Mr. Jerôme Bassong, ACP Expert Private Sector, Mr. Claudio Salinas, EuropeAid Chief Economic Section and Mr. M’Hamed Cherif, Project Manager Private Sector Enobling Environment Facility.

The Centre for the Development of Enterprise is a joint institution of the ACP [African, Caribbean and Pacific] Group of States and the European Union, set up under the Cotonou Agreement and funded by the European Development Fund. The CDE supports the implementation of private sector development strategies in ACP countries. To this end, it provides non-financial business development services to companies in these countries, either through sectoral or regional programmes, or through ad-hoc individual operations.

The CDE also encourages partnerships between European and ACP economic agents. These can take various forms [financial, technical or commercial partnership, management contract, license or franchise agreement, sub-contracting] and occur at any stage in the development of a project [conception, identification and assessment of potential partners, legal, technical and financial structuring, fund-raising, support for the implementation and monitoring of the partnership. The programmes carried out by the CDE extend beyond manufacturing and agro-industry and also cover services [information and communication technologies, environment, tourism, etc.].

Under the supervision of EuropeAid/AIDCO, the CDE manages PRO€INVEST, a joint EU-ACP program, endowed with €110 million. This programme supports investment promotion and facilitates technology transfers in favour of ACP businesses operating in sector with growth potential. PRO€INVEST favours a double approach : on the one hand, it assists initiatives by intermediary organizations to improve the business environment and upgrade their capacity to provide services to enterprises; on the other it supports investment promotion and the conclusion of partnerships between companies operating in key sectors.