The World Bank has published the 2015 rankings in its Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) report for Africa. Revised annually, the CPIA score evaluates, on a scale of 1 to 6, the capacity of a country's policies and institutions to support sustainable growth and poverty reduction. With Cape Verde and Senegal, West Africa is home to the second and third best scores in the continental ranking, after Rwanda. Read on

West African ministers came together to outline a course of action to accelerate progress on the Great Green Wall. The First Conference of the Great Green Wall for the Sahara and the Sahel Initiative was held from 2-7 May in Dakar, bringing together ministers from countries north and south of the Sahara as well as their development partners. Organised by the African Union, the high-level conference follows on the COP21 climate change conference, during which the international community pledged an additional USD 4 billion in support for the Great Green Wall over the next 5 years. Read on

Chad and Sierra Leone are among the eight countries with food insecurity levels categorised as "alarming" in the 2015 Global Hunger Index (GHI) from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The scores of Niger (34.5) and Nigeria (32.8) are both very close to the “alarming level” of food insecurity which is particularly worrying for Africa’s most populous country. Most other West African countries registered scores showing food insecurity in the "serious" range. Read on