Lomé, Togo, 15^th November 2021. As part of the implementation of the Regional Support Programme for National Social Safety Nets, ECOWAS, through its Regional Agency for Agriculture and Food (RAAF), will be holding an International Seminar to share Experiences on Social Safety Nets for Food and Nutrition in West Africa. The Seminar, which will be held in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, from 19^th to 23^rd November 2021 in a mixed format (online and face-to-face), will be webcast live on the RAAF’s Facebook page and relayed on those of the Directorate of Agriculture and Rural Development and the ECOWAS Commission.

The objective of the event is to map the interventions, their promoters as well as the capitalisation of the results and the sharing of the knowledge generated, with a view to revising the Regional Programme.

The innovative actions promoted in the Member States to be capitalised during the Seminar contribute, among others, to (i) strengthening the capacities of Member States on social safety net instruments as well as project engineering and coordination, (ii) testing several relevant social safety net instruments covering various thematic areas such as food distribution, child development and access to social services, development of the main source of income and food security of rural households, the strengthening of livelihoods and resilience, and the development and testing of targeting methods, and (iii) capitalising on good practices, lessons learned and cross-cutting issues such as gender and climate change.

The Seminar falls within the capitalisation of the regional project on social safety nets funded by the Spanish Cooperation and the ECOWAS Commission. Indeed, after six years of implementation, the project has produced knowledge, and generated achievements (good practices, lessons learned) that can be scaled up.

Attendance is free and open to all actors working on social safety net issues in the field of food and nutrition. Participants include, among others, representatives of the ECOWAS Commission, national stakeholders represented by the National Agricultural Investment and Food and Nutrition Security Programme focal points and coordinators of social safety net programmes/projects in each country, other African regions, the International Humanitarian Community and the technical and financial partners. The face-to-face guests will mainly be the 19 promoters of social safety net field projects selected through the two RAAF’s calls for project proposals launched between 2015 and 2021.