Stakeholders from across West Africa have been meeting in Lomé since Wednesday, July 29, 2026, to draft an operating manual for a planned ECOWAS risk financing window. The mechanism is intended to strengthen the region’s response to food, climate-related and livestock crises.
A financial tool to complement the regional reserve
The Regional Agency for Agriculture and Food is leading the initiative amid worsening food insecurity.
According to ECOWAS Resident Representative in Togo Dewey Emily Grey, the number of people facing food insecurity in West Africa and the Sahel rose from 22.1 million in 2020 to nearly 52.9 million in 2026.
“Today, West Africa and the Sahel are grappling with repeated crises that are undermining the food system over the long term. This trend underscores the urgent need to strengthen our collective capacity to anticipate, prepare for and respond to crises,” Grey said.
The planned financing window will complement the Regional Food Security Reserve, which ECOWAS established in 2013 under its regional agricultural policy, ECOWAP. The reserve combines physical food stocks with a financial mechanism designed to assist member states affected by food crises.
Speeding up emergency response
According to Alagbe Jonas, head of the reserve division, the reserve has been deployed 27 times over the past decade to provide grains and nutritional products to vulnerable populations. It currently has enough capacity to support 3.18 million people for one month.
“We decided to establish a risk financing mechanism within the reserve to respond to sudden crises,” Jonas said.
The manual will define the window’s governance rules, the conditions under which funding can be activated, disbursement procedures, and monitoring and evaluation arrangements.
ECOWAS plans to use instruments such as sovereign insurance and other risk-transfer mechanisms to make funding available more quickly when unexpected crises occur.
Ayi Renaud Dossavi