Effective Partnerships for Self-Development

Shell has operated in the Gamba region in Gabon for nearly 40 years, but oil activities are declining. Today, a quarter of the local population of Gamba, about 2,000 people, are dependent on Shell for basic social amenities such as education and sea transportation (for food and other materials).

Since 1998, Shell Gabon has seen the need to promote partnerships with national and local government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), aimed at encouraging self-development, and preparing for life ‘after Shell’. Shell has sponsored several programmes:

• Community health care has been effectively transferred to the Regional Medical Centrein Gamba. Local authorities and Shell have contributed to a new operating theatre.
  
  
• A project, co-sponsored and managed by the Research Institute of Agroforestry (IRAF),has trained about 150 local farmers since 2000. The farmers have applied their new skills to increase local productivity. The project will be fully handed over to IRAF and the local community in 2002.
  
  
• The ‘Fondation Entreprise en Creation’ continues to provide training and consultancy to small businesses and promotes entrepreneurship in schools through the ‘School I love’ and ‘Creative Youth’ contests.

Common to all these initiatives is positive engagement with communities and national and local authorities. The successful outcome of projects such as the transfer of health care to the Regional Medical Centre demonstrate the role that effective partnerships can play in addressing the ‘funding gap’ left by declining oil activities in Gabon.