ECOWAS Commission engages partners with a view of strengthening collaboration for innovative early warning solutions in West Africa.

The Vice President of the Commission, H. E. Damtien L. Tchintchibidja, led an ECOWAS delegation to Washington, D.C., USA, from April 2nd to 6, 2024, to foster partnerships for enhanced Early Warning and Early Warning Response in the ECOWAS region.

The main objective of the mission was to meet with key partners to foster collaboration towards capacity building, in the context of Early Warning and Early Response and to strengthen human security. To this end, a collaboration with the renowned Georgetown Institute of Women, Peace, and Security (GIWPS), is in the pipelines, based on their expertise and their longstanding experience in pedagogical training, to dispense critical and targeted Train the Trainer-tailored content for the benefit of National Centres and other stakeholders in the Early Warning and Response ecosystem.

As part of the mission’s outreach, the ECOWAS delegation co-hosted a roundtable discussion on “Building Peace and Resilience in West Africa” that brought together students, professors, and key stakeholders across the U.S. Government. The roundtable was attended by representatives of the diplomatic corps, academia, NGO’s, think tanks, research institutions, and US Government agencies, including the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies.

In addition, the ECOWAS delegation held bilateral meetings with key partners in Washington, D.C. Specifically, the ECOWAS Vice President met with the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for West Africa of the US Department of State, Mr. Michael Heath, to brief on the progress made with the establishment of the National Early Warning and Response Mechanisms in Member States, which was initially funded by the Department of State through the EWARP project. Vice President Tchintchibidja also met with the Assistant Administrator of the Bureau for Africa of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Dr Monde Muyangwa, to discuss potential areas of collaboration, building on the gains of the fruitful past collaboration between the ECOWAS Commission and USAID.