The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission has successfully concluded the ECOWAS Agriculture Policy (ECOWAP) web platform and Continental electronic Biennial Report (eBR) Web Application Joint Testing Session as part of efforts to enhance agricultural data transparency and food security within the West African sub-region.
The five-day event, held from 21 to 25 October 2024 in Accra, Ghana. brought together Member States and regional experts to collaboratively test, validate, and refine the ECOWAP-eBR web application.
The objective of the workshop was to conduct a joint testing session of the ECOWAP-eBR web application with Member States and regional experts to validate the system’s functionality, enhance participants’ capacity to use the platform effectively and gather feedback to improve its features.
The aim is to improve data monitoring and reporting for ECOWAS Agricultural Policy and the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), enhancing efficiency, transparency, and accessibility for informed policy-making and regional agrarian progress tracking.
Speaking during the workshop, the Programme Officer of ECOWAP/CAADP Monitoring and Evaluation, Mrs. Fatmata L. SEIWOH, who represented the Director of Agriculture and Rural Development, highlighted the importance of the ECOWAP-eBR system in promoting evidence-based decision-making and policy implementation.
She emphasized the web-based tool’s potential to enhance agricultural data transparency, contributing to food security and economic growth, and the Commission’s commitment to supporting Member States.
Declaring the Workshop open, the CAADP/Biennial review focal point of the Ghana Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Mr. Faisal MUNKAILA, who represented the Permanent Secretary, welcomed all participants and highlighted the country’s commitment to agricultural transformation and regional cooperation.
Member States experts who are users of the systems that have been inter-operated, received hands-on guidance and engaged in guided data entry using historical data from their respective countries by demonstrating key features of the web application and discussed CAADP and ECOWAP indicators.
These exercises by the Member States were designed to build proficiency in using the system to provide the region with a seamless tool for transmitting their data from countries through the regional system to the continental system and to identify areas for improvement.
By the end of the week, summary of the results of the testing, system enhancements and critical recommendations to ensure the efficiency of the system were registered.
In preparation of the fifth round of Biennial reporting on agricultural growth and transformation in 2025, ECOWAS Member States are guaranteed a seamless system.
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was established when the ECOWAS Treaty was signed by 15 West African Heads of State and Government on the 28th of May 1975 in Lagos, Nigeria.
The ECOWAS region spans an area of 5.2 million square kilometres. The Member States are Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Senegal and Togo.
Considered one of the pillars of the African Economic Community, ECOWAS was set up to promote co-operation and integration, leading to the establishment of an economic union in West Africa to raise the living standards of its peoples, and to maintain and enhance economic stability, foster relations-among Member States and contribute to the progress and development of the African continent.
In 2007, ECOWAS Secretariat was transformed into a Commission. The Commission is headed by the President, assisted by a Vice President, and Five Commissioners, comprising experienced bureaucrats who are providing the leadership in this new orientation. As part of this renewal process, ECOWAS is implementing critical and strategic programmes that will deepen cohesion and progressively eliminate identified barriers to full integration. In this way, the estimated 300 million citizens of the community can ultimately take ownership for the realization of the new vision of moving from an ECOWAS of States to an “ECOWAS of the People: Peace and Prosperity to All” by 2050.
