I am delighted to have joined the West Africa Regional Program as Mission Director. I believe that we have a sound program that is bringing about positive changes in West Africa.

Since I have been here, the West Africa Regional Program has successfully met a number of challenges. In this newsletter, you can read about our work to support the Government of Burkina Faso to develop a Threshold Country Plan that was approved by the Board of Directors of the Millennium Challenge Corporation in July. WARP is now ready to help the Government of Burkina Faso implement a two-year, $12,9 million program to improve enrollment and attendance rates of girls in primary schools.

In July 2005, Secretary Rice announced the establishment of another Trade Hub in Dakar, Senegal under the auspices of the West Africa Regional Program. WARP is delighted to take on this challenge to complement the work it has done under the Accra-based West Africa Trade Hub program.

WARP is now responsible for USAID programs in a number of non-presence countries - Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Cote d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Niger, Sao Tome & Principe, and Togo.

In the future, I look forward to greater collaboration with the Department of State and USAID/Washington on new programs to better address conflict prevention and mitigation in the region.

I have an excellent staff at WARP and we look forward to working with our client Missions to implement our new program statement which we will develop in collaboration with bilateral USAID Missions, Ambassadors in USAID and non USAID presence Missions and with our colleagues from USAID/Washington.