Niamey (Niger) — The 2020 Second quarter accountability and programme performance review meeting of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) took place virtually on 21, 21 and 23 July 2020.
This meeting whose theme is "Programme delivery in uncertain times (COVID-19 pandemic)" aims to provide the opportunity to enhance result-based planning, monitoring and reporting and to foster the culture of accountability and transparency.
During the meeting, the Chiefs of Sections of each subprogramme made presentations on progress made in a cross-sectional manner towards achieving tangible results and on the financial status of their respective subprogrammes.
At the sub regional office for West Africa (SRO-WA) of ECA, presentations have been made by the Chief of the Dynamics Demographic for Development (DDD) section, Bakary Dosso and the chief of the sub regional initiatives (SRI) section, Amadou Diouf. According to these presentations, in general SRO-WA performs well despite this particular COVID19 pandemic situation.
The office is implementing its programme by working closely and seamlessly with ECA Divisions and has joint activities and coalitions with other United Nations agencies, the regional economic commissions, research institutes on dynamics demographic and African Union.
The office also performed well in terms of regional integration (AfCFTA, partnership with Resident Coordinators of the United Nations system, support to the 2020 Vision of ECOWAS and future ECOWAS Vision 2050...), study designs in terms of dynamics demographic for the development and production of several knowledge products (study on the impact of COVID-19 on West African countries, knowledge products on economic and social structural transformation in West Africa: Study on DDD and structural transformation in West Africa... ).
The Director of ECA SRO-WA, Ngone Diop said: "The way in which our area of support has been used actually trying to shape and position our division or our office at a time of reference when it comes to DDD and the way in which we use the outcomes actually informs the regional integration and vice versa".
"Our work helped us to position ourselves as an institution that has represented ECA when it comes to the macroeconomic responses to COVID19 and when it comes to support countries to developing their National development plans in a way that speaks to the structural issues", said Ngone Diop.
However, SRO-WA faced some challenges like pervasive insecurity and extreme violence in the Sahel region fueled by the new geopolitical dynamics, limited resources to respond to growing demands from MS due to Covid-19, among other and the need to support 15 resident coordinators, risks to jeopardizing ongoing efforts for sustainable development in the sub-region due to COVID-19 impact on four dynamics demographic pillars: health, education, employment and governance.
For more information, please contact: Tahirou Gouro, Communication Officer, ECA-SRO/WA,
Email: gouro2@un.org
