Placed under the facilitation of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, in particular the Sub-Regional Office for West Africa, this second meeting will make it possible to ensure the monitoring of the implementation of the recommendations of the first annual meeting of the SRCM in West Africa held on November 11-12, 2013, in Dakar, as well as of the recommendations of the 15^th session of the Regional Coordination Mechanism (RCM) held in Abuja in March 2014. The SRCM is the sub-regional response to the RCM which, during the November 2013 session, established six priority areas of cooperation among the sub-regional integration institutions of West Africa and the United Nations System. These six areas include: (1) Governance, Peace and Security and Humanitarian Action, (2) Economic Integration, (3) Development of infrastructures, (4) Human Development and gender equality, (5) Agriculture, Food Security, Water and the Environment, (6) Development of the Private Sector, of Industry and Mines.

During this meeting in Dakar the tasks will be to: (i) choose the lead agencies for the thematic groups selected during last year’s meeting and adopt an outline cooperation plan that would enable the Agencies to “work together” in the framework of their assistance to the Regional Economic Communities (RECs); (ii) adopt a matrix of actions and monitoring indicators for each thematic group; and (ii) analyze the impact of the recommendations of the 15^th session of the RCM-Africa on the orientations chosen by West Africa for its mechanism, in order to better realign it in relation to the vision of Agenda 2063 of the African Union.

The regional cooperation plan, together with its implementation matrix that all the structures participating in this meeting will adopt in Dakar, will be based on the regional priorities stated in the regional programmes of the ECOWAS and the WAEMU. It will take into account the specific mandate of each UN Agency operating in West Africa. Apart from constituting a consultation framework, this meeting will make it possible to seek out possible partnerships for the implementation of actions to harmonize the policies, programmes and instruments of regional integration in West Africa.