2025 Annual Meeting of Ecowas National Office Heads: Towards Enhanced Regional Integration

The 2025 Annual Meeting of ECOWAS National Office Heads is taking place in Dakar, Senegal, from 16 to 19 December 2025. The theme is: Changes, Challenges and Opportunities in the New ECOWAS: Strengthening Collaboration among ECOWAS National Offices to Advance Regional Integration Programmes.

Organised by the ECOWAS External Relations Directorate, this meeting aims to discuss the efforts of the heads of national offices to ensure close cooperation between ECOWAS national offices, and to share best practices on the resources, challenges and opportunities for promoting ECOWAS’ vision, strategies, reforms, policies, programmes, projects and activities.

In his opening speech, Mr Babacar Ba, Head of the ECOWAS National Office and Director in charge of African Integration for the Republic of Senegal, speaking on behalf of the Minister of Foreign Affairs and African Integration of the Republic of Senegal, highlighted the importance of this meeting and reaffirmed Senegal’s willingness to work closely with other member states to achieve the objectives defined.

The Head of the ECOWAS National Office in Sierra Leone, Mr Komba Momoh, stated that ‘This meeting marks an important moment for us to reflect on our collective achievements, review our challenges and reaffirm our shared commitment to strengthening ECOWAS’s actions in its Member States.’

H.E. Ms Fatou Sow Sarr, Commissioner for Human Development and Social Affairs (DHAS), on behalf of the President of the ECOWAS Commission, H.E. Dr Omar Alieu TOURAY,

stated that ‘this meeting will generate valuable ideas and best practices to further strengthen cooperation between ECOWAS national offices, which is essential to advancing ECOWAS Vision 2050 and promoting programmes and projects at the national level, while involving various stakeholders, particularly young people, women and development partners.’

The annual meeting of ECOWAS National Office Heads was institutionalised by Decision C/6/12/12/90. Member States are encouraged to contribute to the Community and harmonise their strategies and policies to achieve Community objectives (Article 5 of the revised ECOWAS Treaty of 1993). The role of the national offices is to ensure horizontal and external cooperation to promote regional integration programmes (Article 27 of the revised Operational Manual).