The Vice-President of the ECOWAS Commission undertakes to support the visibility and mobilization of resources for the ECOWAS Center for Gender Development (CCDG).

Dakar, Senegal, September 30, 2022. As part of her tour of contact with ECOWAS Institutions and Agencies, H.E. Madame Damtien TCHINTCHIBIDJA, Vice-President of the ECOWAS Commission was this Friday, September 30, 2022 at the ECOWAS Centre for Gender Development (CCDG) in Dakar, Senegal. The Vice-President’s visit follows that of the Intergovernmental Action Group against Money Laundering in West Africa (GIABA), a specialized ECOWAS agency located in the same building as the CCDG in Dakar.

After welcoming H.E Damtien TCHINTCHIBIDJA on behalf of the CCDG staff, Mr Awudu Ahmed Gumah, Head of Planning, Research, Monitoring and Evaluation, congratulated the Vice-President on her appointment, given that she is the second woman to occupy this prestigious post since the creation of the sub-regional institution. This demonstrates that the ECOWAS Commission is progressively moving towards gender equality.

This was followed by a presentation of the CCDG’s programs and achievements by Madame Salimata THIAM, the CCDG’s Senior Gender Programs Officer. She highlighted the CCDG’s six areas of intervention, namely strengthening the organizational and institutional capacities of national mechanisms for promoting gender equality; equitable access to basic social services, notably education and health; women’s economic empowerment; democracy, good governance, human rights, peace and security; gender and trade; gender and migration. She also highlighted the difficulties, notably the lack of financial and human resources, the need for training, and the red tape that slows down the implementation of ECOWAS gender equality initiatives. She ended her presentation by asking the Vice-President for her support in mobilizing resources and raising the profile of the CCDG’s activities, in order to strengthen and facilitate the appropriation of the Center’s programs by the populations of member countries, as well as the involvement of civil society and the private sector.

In response to the Gender Centre’s grievances, the Vice-President of the ECOWAS Commission undertook to support the mobilization of resources and the visibility of the CCDG’s activities. While pledging to make gender one of the key pillars of its agenda from now on, she recommended above all the urgent development and implementation of a visibility strategy to shed light on the CCDG’s programs and achievements, which will help facilitate the mobilization of resources from technical and financial partners, as well as give full meaning to the vision of an ECOWAS of Peoples.