The African Development Bank organised a ministerial conference on jobs for young people in Africa, a meeting that was held in Abidjan on 18 October. The event brought together some of the continent’s Ministers of Finance and Youth Employment, young people from Côte d’Ivoire, as well as government officials, leaders of civil society organisations and other private sector representatives from ECOWAS countries. Read on

According to the 2016 Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG), governance in Africa has overall slightly improved over the past decade but the security situation has clearly become worse: two out of three Africans live in a country where safety and the rule of law deteriorated over the past ten years. This is particularly the case in Guinea-Bissau, Nigeria and Chad. Overall, the ECOWAS area is the second best-performing African region, after southern Africa, having recorded the largest increase in its average score (52.4) for overall governance. Read on

West African finance ministers met in Dakar on 15-16 August during the 18th meeting of the joint ECOWAS-UEMOA Committee on the management of the Common External Tariff (CET). The objective of the meeting was to discuss two major concerns: the regional economic partnership agreement (EPA) with the European Union and the implications for the ECOWAS Common External Tariff. Read on

Officially launched during the COP21 Climate Change Conference in December 2015, the “4/1000 Initiative: Soils for Food Security and Climate” aims to ensure that agriculture contributes to combating climate change. French Agriculture Minister Stéphane Le Foll went on mission to Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal, to inform the West African partner countries about the initiative and encourage the establishment and diffusion of climate-smart agricultural practices to increase the carbon stock of soils and regenerate degraded soils. Read on