Economic Community of West African States
Problem statement
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is a 15-member regional organization, established in 1975, with a mandate of promoting economic integration and shared development of West African sub-region (the member states include Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Cote d'Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Sierra Leone, Senegal and Togo). Despite steady economic growth in several ECOWAS countries in recent years, ECOWAS is still facing a myriad of security and socioeconomic issues that threaten to shake the region’s relative stability and economic progress. The challenges range from terrorism and violent extremism, to piracy, political instability, elections-related violence, drug trafficking or deadly viruses. These, as well as other security and violence-related issues are hardly limited to one country alone but tend to lead to the spillover of instability across the region. As security in the sub-region remains tenuous and peace fragile and COVID-19 pandemics is seriously affecting national economies with the economic growth in the region forecasted to contract for about 3 % in 2020, bringing per capita incomes back to 2013 levels.
It is for these reasons that an effective and efficient early warning and response system that would provide information on the prevention, mitigation and subsequent response to crises is urgent in ECOWAS. A fully functioning early warning and response system would additionally help prevent the recurrence and relapse into conflict and contribute building more resilient communities in (West) Africa.
What we do
Capacity Building
1. The Early Warning and Response Partnership (EWARP) supports information sharing, conflict prevention and crisis management among West African States. Through EWARP, ITF is working to develop a full spectrum of early warning capacity for ECOWAS and its member states so they can proactively identify emerging crises and improve their response mechanisms once a crisis begins.
As part of its activities, ITF is also engaged in process improvement and consolidation of M&E framework of EWD and process design for 15 ECOWAS National Centers for the Coordination of Early Warning and Response Mechanism (NCCRM) aiming at increasing effectiveness and cost efficiency of ECOWAS. In accordance with the Grant project plan, ITF supported establishment NCCRMs in first (5) five pilot states, namely Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia and Mali with Guinea Bissau. On the continental level ITF supported AU’s Conflict Prevention and Early Warning Division with provision of embed support (Conflict Prevention Advisers) and capacity building for its analysts and colleagues from other divisions of AU’s Peace and Security Department.
The proposed activities shall contribute to stabilization of the delicate political, security and socio-economic landscape of ECOWAS region.
2. The Macroeconomic Fiscal Modeling for Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) focuses on strengthening the ECOWAS capacities of the Macroeconomic Policy Department (Research and Statistics Unit) and transferring knowledge to the relevant ministries of the 15 ECOWAS Member States.
The project addresses the goal stipulated in the Memorandum of Understanding between the ECOWAS Commission and the ITF to strengthen the capacity of the Macroeconomic Policy Department – Research and Statistics Unit (RSU), to assist ECOWAS Member States in having a better control of mobilization of their domestic resources and mitigate macroeconomic fiscal imbalances due to unplanned events (i. e. COVID-19 pandemic).
Based on successfully implemented training of Macroeconomic Fiscal Modelling for RSU of Macroeconomic Policy Department in 2019-20 implemented by the ITF team and jointly funded by Slovenian Development Cooperation and ECOWAS Commission, ITF is now, jointly with RSU developing fiscal forecasting model/software for ECOWAS and its Member States. The purpose of the model is to further support forecasting of fiscal revenues and expenditures, and to ensure convergence to medium-term fiscal targets (fiscal balance and debt) with a purpose of achieving long-term sustainable fiscal position.