SERVICE CONTRACT financed under the 8th European Development Fund - Project Nr 8-ACP-TPS 32

The Regional Technical Assistant, Dr. Nicolas Denormandie, was based at the Regional Coordination Unit of PACE in Bamako (Mali). He was covering initially seven French-speaking countries within Western and Central Africa, including 6 coastal countries (Guinea, Cote d'Ivoire, Togo, Benin, Gabon, and Congo) and 1 non-coastal country: Central African Republic. Following a discussion between RTAs and the regional coordinator during the CBPP meeting in Conakry (February 2004), a reshuffle of countries covered was set up. A switch between Congo Brazzaville and Ghana was agreed upon. Then, from November 2004, an 8thcountry was added to the RTA's coverage, namely Chad, following the reallocation of Dr Andrea Massarelli, former national TA, who became the Eastern Africa Regional TA. Finally, following the departure in October 2005 of Dr. Hans Krebs from the PACE project, who was in charge of 5 countries, the 2 RTAs of Bamako were requested to share the remaining countries which they inherited for their new contracts (with a new coverage of 10 countries each). Therefore the RTA was attributed 2 additional countries : Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea making a total of 10 countries