The ECOWAS Gender Observatory (ECOGO) is a regional digital platform for monitoring, evaluating, and reporting on ECOWAS programs, projects, and activities related to gender in the Member States, as well as a statistical database on the state of gender equality and the empowerment of women in the ECOWAS Member States.

The overall objective of ECOGO is to establish a regional system for monitoring, evaluation, reporting, and a gender database that will serve as a web-based digital platform mechanism to accelerate progress in implementing regional commitments to gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls within the Commission and the ECOWAS region.

Specifically, ECOGO will serve as:

• A platform for the systematic and real-time monitoring, evaluation, and reporting of the EGDC’s programs and activities in the Member States;
• A mechanism for the systematic provision of information to the Member States on the EGDC’s contributions to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls in the region;
• A rapid monitoring platform for the progress of Member States’ compliance with the ratification, domestication, application, and reporting of regional and global instruments on gender and human rights;
• A regional research and knowledge center on gender that will serve as a think tank on gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, including in South-South knowledge exchange forums on best practices between regions;
• An observatory for the collection, storage, processing, and provision of statistical data on the state of gender in the ECOWAS region, which will also serve as a database for sharing best practices on the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of girls and women in the region, provide data on the expertise available in various fields in the Member States, and report on the different gender-related events taking place in West Africa and other regions of Africa;
• A platform for establishing virtual links with the EGDC’s partners, with a view to building a more robust synergy in promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls in the ECOWAS region;
• A reporting system that enables the recording of interactions with civil society organizations.

The ECOGO platform is fully operational and was officially launched in September 2024 following training for the various actors to ensure its effective implementation in the Member States.

At the national level, ECOGO will be primarily managed by the EGDC focal points in the Member States and other stakeholders involved in the implementation of gender programs overall, and particularly the EGDC’s programs. The responsibilities of the national-level stakeholders will include collecting data from various sources, entering data into the system, analyzing the data where necessary, and producing reports.

At the regional level, ECOGO will be managed by the EGDC, which will be responsible for analyzing the data entered into the system, producing quarterly and annual reports, establishing the necessary links with the African Union Gender Observatory, keeping the ECOGO platform regularly updated, organizing periodic training sessions for stakeholders, and ensuring the visibility of the Observatory.