ECOWAS Commission President de Souza at the OECD

 

On the sidelines of the OECD Africa Forum on 29 September 2016, the Sahel and West Africa Club Secretariat (SWAC/OECD) and the OECD Development Centre had a working session with the ECOWAS Commission President Alain Marcel de Souza. The session provided an opportunity to present key priorities of OECD’s work with Africa and to listen to the expectations of the ECOWAS Commission, beyond its SWAC membership. President de Souza expressed interest in benefiting from a multidimensional analysis of the macro-economic, monetary and financial integration of West Africa. Moreover, the OECD could also be instrumental in supporting the establishment of a new ECOWAS statistical training centre, in particular by facilitating the integration of macro-economic indicators and data from the OECD tax database. Finally, in response to the unstable security situation that is threatening West African citizens, the ECOWAS Commission, with the support of USAID, aims to beef up its early warning and response network system (ECOWARN). These collaborative opportunities will be further discussed in the coming weeks. They illustrate the OECD’s willingness to broaden the activities it does in service to the African continent and to take into account the multidimensional and regional dimensions of development based on the experiences of the OECD Development Centre and SWAC.