Strategic Capacities for Meeting the Challenges of the Future: A Preliminary Assessment of ECOWAS

The Humanitarian Futures Programme is working in
collaboration with the ECOWAS Commission in order
to assess and enhance the latter’s long-term planning
capacity during its restructuring and expansion.
The project is intended to relate ECOWAS’ emerging
commitment to disaster risk reduction (DRR) within
the context of its conflict prevention mandate. Having
separately evaluated the drivers of future conflict and
humanitarian crises in the sub-region, the aim of this
report is to present some preliminary findings as to
the institutional challenges that ECOWAS as an intergovernmental
organisation (IGO) will face in addressing
them. Research was conducted in Abuja as well as
Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal and Sierra Leone and
consisted primarily of confidential, structured interviews
with several dozen subjects with deep experience of
ECOWAS, including officials of the Commission and
specialised agencies, civil society activists, scientists and
academics, diplomats and representatives of member
state governments, including disaster management
organisations.