A meeting of the Regional Integration Committee bringing together the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) and twenty Inter-Governmental Organizations (IGOs) operating in the sub-region will be held on September 3-4, 2015, at the Belle Côte Hotel in Abidjan [Côte d’Ivoire]. This meeting will be held in the framework of the Memorandum of Agreement on Cooperation and Partnership among the West African Inter-Governmental Organizations, signed on June 14, 2013 in Ouagadougou in the sidelines of the 11th WAEMU-ECOWAS Inter-Institutional Meeting.
The objective of this meeting facilitated by the ECA is to promote the synergy of actions with the West African IGOs in the implementation of regional integration projects, by working through their complementarities. Specifically, they will examine the draft rules of procedure for this cooperation and partnership framework and decide on the terms of reference for a study to inform them on the capacities of the IGOs for the optimal support of regional integration organizations in the implementation of regional development programmes and on the modalities of this support.
This study financed by the ECA will result in the design of an updated database on the IGOs, the establishment of a typology for IGOs, accompanied by an analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) and the identification of the comparative advantages according to the areas of cooperation as set out in the Memorandum of Agreement. It is also expected that this study will compile best practices for IGOs, conduct an analysis of the administrative, financial and accounting procedures, as well as listing proposals on operational modalities for collaboration in terms of the design and implementation of programs, projects and resource mobilization.