ECOWAS Commission president praises group on its 40th anniversary

Celebrating its 40th anniversary this month, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), held a press conference recently, during which ECOWAS Commission President Kadre Desire Ouedraogo spoke about the importance of citizen involvement to keep the organization moving forward.

Ouedraogo also spoke on a variety of other issues, addressing questions from the press about the role of the ECOWAS Parliament in West Africa, saying ECOWAS was open to possible statutory revisions to increase the power held by Parliament.

Ouedraogo also cited several ECOWAS accomplishments in the past two years -- including implementation of the Common External Tariff (CET), multilateral surveillance, trade liberalization and the ECOWAS Customs Union -- and provided updates on the region's activities in the mining, agricultural, environmental policy, infrastructure-transport, telecommunications and energy sectors.

Ouedraogo praised West African officials for their responses to last year's Ebola outbreak and terrorist attacks, stressing that ECOWAS has made great improvements in handling health and terrorism crises.