Every year, Burundi's natural resources suffer as a result of human activity. Between deforestation, flooding and the impacts of climate change, the population, already very vulnerable, is witnessing the degradation of resources on which it is heavily dependent.
As we have seen, protecting the environment and biodiversity is a crucial issue for Burundi, as is hygiene and access to drinking water. With this in mind, Louvain Coopération wanted to invest particularly in these areas and support the local associations that work daily to protect the country's natural resources and the well-being of its inhabitants. Together, they are developing very concrete initiatives for the communities.
2024 was a very active year for Louvain Coopération. Our organisation was strengthened by the merger with Geomoun and Rotary Clubs for Development. These mergers enabled us to increase our activities (+€1.3 million) in new areas and our impact on beneficiary populations. We are now present in Haiti and have expanded our activities to Benin and the DRC.
To address the major inequalities arising from the globalization of markets, Louvain Coopération has been working for several years to develop sustainable food systems. To achieve this, we are developing an integrated and systemic approach that aims to optimize each link and support each actor in the chain, from field to plate.
In a context where global food systems are facing major challenges, knowledge diversification becomes essential for their sustainable and equitable transformation. The article "Knowledge Democratization Approaches for Food Systems Transformation", co-authored by a group of researchers, including Amaury Peeters, Head of our Research & Development Department and published in May 2024 in the journal Nature Food, highlights the importance of integrating traditional, indigenous and local knowledge into decisions relating to food systems.
Chanmony Sean, a researcher at the Cambodia Development Research Institute, is currently doing a doctoral thesis on the agroecological transition in Cambodia, as part of our project “Agroecology and Safe food System Transitions (ASSET)”.
The overall objective is to build a tool and a methodology adaptable to local contexts, in order to evaluate agroecological systems in transition and support the actors of this transition. Chanmony has already conducted a critical review of current tools, their uses, their effects and their limits.
From Peru to Cambodia, via Madagascar and Benin, our teams and partners support thousands of actors in food systems: agricultural producers, but also groups and entrepreneurs who make a living from the processing of agricultural products.
Our goal: to enable them to improve their yields, while preserving the land that feeds them. By experimenting and integrating new practices, they become more resilient to climate hazards, obtain fair compensation for the work provided and improve their living conditions.
On the African continent, maternal mortality after caesarean section remains very high: almost one woman in 200 dies as a result of this operation. That's 50 times more than in Western countries! To combat this problem, Louvain Coopération has produced the manual ‘Pratique de la césarienne en conditions de ressources limitées’ (‘Caesarean section practice in conditions of limited resources’). It's a very practical book, the result of collaboration between academics and experts in the field. Our aim is to distribute it as widely as possible.
In an interview with Devlop' a year ago, our Rector, Vincent Blondel, expressed his desire “for Louvain Coopération and UCLouvain to strengthen each other as much as possible”. This strengthening is achieved through the many collaborations that are taking shape between our sister organisations, and we thought it would be interesting to report on them.