As part of exchanges and evaluations of the level of operation of National Early Warning Centers in member states, a working mission led by Dr. Onyinye Nkechi Onwuka, Ag. Director, Early Warning visited Liberia from July 22 to 23, 2024.

During its stay, the mission held a technical meeting with the team from the Liberian National Coordination Centre for Early Warning and Response Mechanism (NCCRM), which was the second National Early Warning Center to be established, with the support of ECOWAS Commission in February 2018 after Bamako, Mali Center in November 2017.

The Ag. Director of Early Warning, Dr Onyinye Onwuka, and the Ag. Head of the Systems Management and Planning Division, Mr. Marcel Komi Bossou, accessed the operations, achievements and challenges of the Center and organized a training session for the ECOWARN field monitors, the Center’s analysts and its county liaisons on data collection, data reporting and data analysis using ECOWARN Reporter platform. ECOWARN, the ECOWAS Warning and Response Network monitors 42 event types and 55 predefined Indicators to assess human security risk that affect the west Africa citizens.

The ECOWAS Early which was centralized at the regional level at its inception in 2004 was decentralized from 2015 to the National Level. At as today, 11 National Centers are operational in the Region, in Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, The Gambia.

The mission accompanied by Mr. Arthur Bestman, the Ag Director of the NCCRM Liberia and his Deputy, Mrs. Sophie MP Reeves, had an audience with Vice President, H.E Jeremiah Koung.

During the audience, the Ag. Director of Early Warning reaffirmed ECOWAS’s commitment to making these centers operational and effective in order to contribute to the preservation of regional peace and stability. She informed the Vice President about the upcoming Country Resilience and Human Security Assessment the National Center is going to carried out with a technical support from the Early Warning Directorate and Financial Support from the African Development Bank (AfDB)

The Vice President welcome the mission and express his gratitude to the support ECOWAS gives to Liberia. The Vice President informed the delegation for the next National Center Statutory Board meeting he is going to convene as a Chair, the first of this kind under his Administration.

It should be noted that, the Liberia National Coordination Centre for Early Warning and Response Mechanism is attached to the office of the Vice President.