Can you describe the current project between the CUD and the Governorate of Ngazidja?
The main project in the cooperation that links us to the Governorate of Ngazidja is a water supply project that should allow us to supply water to 6 villages in the commune of Itsahidi, in the south of the island of Ngazidja. Carried out with the support of the AFD and of several local authorities and water agencies (AEAP, AERMC), the project has two components and aims, starting from the Midjendeni borehole, to install all the infrastructure needed to distribute water in the villages of the Itsahidi area, including laying 10 km of pipes and forming a management body able to run and maintain the whole system.
Why did you decide to set up a decentralised cooperation?
Dunkirk is the third largest Comorian town in France and has been home for nearly fifty years to an active and creative Comorian diaspora. Having arrived in Dunkirk through global maritime trade, it has put down roots here and has given a great deal to the development of our port and our industries. Settled though it is, it has not forgotten the archipelago. It was this community that gave rise to the decentralised cooperation between the Dunkirk urban community and the Governorate of Ngazidja.
Why with the Governorate of Ngazidja?
We wanted to cooperate with a body comparable to our own, even though the island of Ngazidja is three times the size of our community's territory and twice as populous. The idea was to raise ourselves to the level of the governorate, at a time when the political and administrative organisation of the Union of the Comoros was, until recently, highly centralised. Taking part in the decentralisation of the Comoros also echoed our own history, as we are the oldest voluntary urban community in France.
Why did you choose to work with HAMAP-Humanitaire?
The association HAMAP-Humanitaire came to us in 2019 with
a project to develop access to water in the Banidji-Est region. As an urban area particularly committed to transition and to preserving resources, we ourselves wanted to develop our cooperation around this theme, at a time when access to water in the Comoros is a genuine development and health issue. Drawing on the experience of the NGO, which has run other projects of the same kind elsewhere in Africa, we committed ourselves by designing a large-scale project intended, in time, to supply between 15,000 and 20,000 people.
Does the CUD have other decentralised cooperations where it works on development projects?
Our cooperation with the island of Ngazidja is mainly focused on water, but through this project we also address training
for the Governorate's staff and, more broadly, the strengthening of the authority's capacity. We also recently responded
to the Governorate's request for help in facing the Covid epidemic, sending it, together with the Seine-Saint-Denis departmental council, half a million medical masks and 7 tonnes of hand sanitiser. We also want our fellow citizens, and young people in the area in particular, to take part in these international commitments. Around ten of them will take part in the Itsahidi water supply works, as part of our policies supporting the international mobility of young people.
The urban community is also engaged in other cooperations on various
fronts. As part of our cooperation with Lebanon, with the support of our urban planning agency, we are supporting a group of municipalities in their efforts to organise themselves, particularly in urban planning, leading to the creation of a territorial development agency. At European level, and following Brexit, we have signed a cooperation agreement with the Irish town of Rosslare, with which we aim to develop strong economic and social ties after the opening of several shipping routes between our two ports.
A first youth exchange will take place in February 2023. More recently, we decided to stand alongside the Ukrainian town of Bucha, to help it face the harsh ordeal it is going through, and we invited it to join the international network of « Memory Cities » that we created in 2016. The network brings together towns in Europe and around the world that suffered destruction because of war and rebuilt themselves. Alongside Bucha, it includes towns such as Gdansk (PL), Rostock (D), Ypres (B), Guernica (E), Bizerte (TN) and Haewsong (South Korea). Within this network we exchange on themes of resilience, reporting on the innovations and experiments carried out here and there to energise our areas, both in urban and in social terms.
As you know, our area is home to a large seaport open to the world. It intends, as a matter of course, to be part of the international movement, with the will to play its part in the order of the world as it has done for centuries.
How does the CUD integrate its cooperation work into its own territory?
The CUD mobilises its departments and the expertise of its staff, trying to find material in its own structural projects and in the networks it develops. As leader of the Memory Cities network, Dunkirk has, echoing its own project to restore the facades of its town centre, supported the commune of Bizerte, our partner town in Tunisia, in an equivalent project in its ancient old port. We have also supported Bizerte in reforming its waste collection strategy, alongside our own projects to overhaul the collection system here. That said, we still have a great deal to do to communicate better about our work and to bring it closer to the people of our area and to its economic dynamism.
That is why our cooperations are being renewed today in line with these dynamics, and why they give a greater place to young people in our international commitments. The international mobility of young people is in fact now a strong strand of our policy, which has led to the creation of several schemes, including the Odyssee programme, which aims in particular to give young people from Dunkirk the chance to discover the world.