INL Sahel Capacity Building and Logistics Support

Strategic Capacity Group (SCG) delivered advisory services, knowledge-sharing, and training events, as well as logistical support and event management services, in Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal for the Department of State Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL). In addition, SCG helped develop five regional networks that enhanced partner self-sufficiency and sustained institutional reform and cross border coordination even after the project ended. This project supported INL’s mission to strengthen Sahelian criminal justice and security sector institutions’ ability to mitigate threats arising from transnational organized crime, terrorist networks, and armed conflict.

Over the course of this five-year project (2017-2022), SCG delivered a comprehensive capacity building program that evolved from initially providing logistics support to INL capacity building events in Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal to directly developing and delivering INL-sponsored trainings and workshops, and supporting and guiding the establishment and consolidation of self-sustaining cross-border and regional security networks. Despite the challenges of the COVID pandemic, political instability, and rising extremist violence in the region during the period of implementation, SCG successfully:

• Planned and delivered over 80 events for more than 1200 participants from more than 100 governmental and civil society institutions from 10 different countries.
• Provided Turn-Key Travel Logistics for vetted participants traveling to events throughout the Sahel and to events in the United States, including corrections training in Colorado and the Mock Prison Riot in West Virigina.
• Delivered event management services, including event venue management, catering, air and ground transportation, site visits and cultural activities, and translation and interpretation. SCG managed multiple 100+ person events, including coordinating security and movement for a site visit during a 200-person conference in Burkina Faso.
• Recruited and deployed experts who advised, mentored, and trained Sahelian governmental partners and security sector-oriented civil society institutions, including facilitating intranational and cross-border networking and knowledge exchange activities.  
• Empowered host nation partners to plan, design, and deliver programming reinforcing partner self-reliance. The capacities developed by participants and partner organizations proved resilient to major disruptions, and even during the COVID pause in programming, participants continued to transfer knowledge and skills, undertake individual pro-reform actions, and promote institutional change with the scarce resources at their disposal.
• Established five “living networks” to sustain learning outcomes and facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration among regional actors. These networks included the Colorado Network for Penitentiary Emergence in West and North Africa (RECEPAON), Regional Association of Chiefs of Police (RACP), Civil Society Development Initiative (CSDI), Special Police Interdicting Drugs in the ECOWAS Region (SPIDER), and the Women in Law Enforcement (WLE) network. These networks have continued to deliver results beyond expectations for members and their organizations. Specifically, participants have consistently leveraged these networks to drive institutional change initiatives targeting police doctrine, extremism in correctional facilities, drug trafficking, and sexual abuse, among other issues.  

Alongside the systematic assessment of participant satisfaction with the logistics, event, and training services delivered, the program featured a performance monitoring plan that tracked participants’ learning, on-the-job use, and potential institutional effects of the skills and knowledge acquired during the events attended, as well as their harnessing of regional networks. SCG employed a longitudinal approach to the collection of outcome data using semi-structured interviews at three points post-event: three months, six months, and one year or more after activity completion. Over 90 percent of interviewees agreed or strongly agreed that knowledge and skills acquired through INL-sponsored events were applicable to their work and helped them improve their on-the-job performance, even one year after event conclusion. In addition, participants credited their involvement in INL-sponsored events and activities with helping to achieve important milestones, such as initiatives to consolidate regional collaboration against terrorism and drug trafficking, plans to institutionalize community policing doctrine to improve security, the introduction of best practices in public order management, and the development of standardized operating procedures to increase the efficiency of anti-narcotics operations.  

• Community-Oriented Policing Strategies (COPS) in the Sahel.  
• Global Corrections Training and Facility Management.
• Law Enforcement Expertise Program (LEEP).
• SE Asia Turn-Key Travel and Logistics Support.