Abuja, 13^th March 2019. The Commission of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has commenced the 14^th meeting of the Strategic Coordinating Committee (SPCC) in Abuja, Nigeria.

Working with the support of the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the SPCC is expected among others, to firm up a post Vision 2020 Vision project and other initiatives for the community which are aimed at further strengthening the ECOWAS strategic planning, monitoring and evaluation systems.

Addressing delegates and officials at the opening ceremony of the 5-Day meeting on the 13^th of March 2019, the Vice President of the ECOWAS Commission, Madam Finda Koroma urged the experts and implementing staff to pay utmost attention to the design of “high impact projects and programmes” while demonstrating the achievement of results to ECOWAS Member States.

Vice President Koroma who was represented by the Commission’s Principal Programme Officer, Programming, Planning and Coordination, Mr. Mam Cherno Jallow, noted that the necessary steps being taken to develop strategic documents on guidance of the post 2020 work of the Commission in advancing the socio-economic well-being of community citizens, will be enhanced by strengthening the Result Based Management (RBM) across the ECOWAS institutions.

Mr. Mam Cherno Jallow enjoined participants to leverage the meeting to discuss progress and next steps on the implementation of the roadmap and the roles of the SPCC as well as the thematic Working Groups which will be set up to work on the project.

Priority attention, he emphasised, must now be given to the popularisation of the post 2020 vision as well as all the strategic documents of the community.

In this regard, he noted that “the best strategic plans are not likely to be successfully implemented if they are not effectively communicated to the stakeholders will be tasked with implementation”.

Also speaking the GIZ/ECOWAS Cluster Coordinator Mr. Ludwig Kirchner raised concerns over ownership of the SPCC processes stating in this regard the need for ECOWAS to “create ownership within its management, Departments/Directorates and within its community with clearly defined institutional standards that are used in order to make the strategy a relevant document”

He stressed the need to reflect on “the road covered in the past few years while assessing on several levels, the status of regional economic integration- what worked? What did not? But most importantly, how far we are from achieving the strategic objectives that were set and whether they still reflect the region’s needs?”

The GIZ chief however expressed the confidence that the knowledge, experience and expertise of the strategic planners and participants will come handy in the creation of a cost effective and efficient process for the development of the new ECOWAS vision which will attract further financial support of the Development Partners.

The series of meeting of the 14^th SPCC is featuring a presentation of the outcome of the work sessions of the technical committee and will generally cover the strengthening of strategic planning and RBM in ECOWAS, implementation of the roadmap of ECOWAS post 2020 Vision, establishment of rules, procedures and operational arrangements of the Strategic Planning and Budget Technical Committee (SPBTC) as well as the popularisation of the post 2020Vision, among others.