US embassy cable - 05ABUJA2322

UNCLAS ABUJA 002322 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
FAS/USDA for Roxana Henderson 
 
E.O.  12598: N/A 
TAGS: EAGR, EAID, TBIO, NI, ATRD, ECOWAS 
SUBJECT: ECOWAS And Phytosanitary Program Proposal 
 
REF A: State 205212  B: ABUJA 2283 
 
1. (U) On November 25 Economic Counselor met with Dr. Subah, 
who handles agricultural programs at ECOWAS.  In response to 
the questions in Ref A, Dr. Subah reported the following. 
 
2. ECOWAS has been working with the USAID West Africa 
Regional Program (WARP) in Accra on SPS policy 
harmonization. They have done surveys of SPS policy in eight 
countries, and are completing the rest. In the case of 
Nigeria the phytosanitary survey is complete, but not the 
animal/sanitary survey. They are also planning a conference. 
 
3. Regarding the possibility of taking on funding on a 
sustainable basis in the future, he said that in general 
ECOWAS was now including a plan for sustainable funding in 
all of its action programs. They had recently adopted the 
action program for agriculture and it includes a fund to 
cover the programs, with proposal to shift from donor 
funding to member and user funding. 
 
4.  ECOWAS uses two main avenues to coordinate and 
distribute information.  Each member country has an ECOWAS 
office, usually housed in member country ministry, often 
either the planning commission, finance ministry or economic 
cooperation ministry.  ECOWAS has direct working 
relationships with the Ministries of Agriculture in each 
country.  In general though, he said public information 
dissemination, and public relations were weak. 
Communications in general was another area specifically 
targeted for improvement. 
 
5. Dr. Subah said that historically administrative and 
financial management had been weak, but currently they were 
building capacity in these areas with donor support. In the 
past, donor partners did most of the administrative and 
financial management of joint programs but this is being 
shifted more to in-house management.  They did have a 
computer/information systems office which was working on 
getting in place database for each sector.  Many were still 
in the development phase, however, and problems with 
telecommunications links between countries could be an 
issue. Lome had a permanent training center that could be 
used to house training programs. 
 
6. ECOWAS is has been in existence for 30 years. Its only 
SPS activity is with USAID. If there is a serious problem 
the Director of ECOWAS could get engaged in resolving it. 
Currently the organization does not train regulatory 
officials in SPS issues. Dr. Subah was unsure whether ECOWAS 
did regulatory training in other areas, though they did 
training for customs officials. They had a meeting at least 
annually, and often more frequently, of the agricultural 
commission, which is made up of Agricultural Ministers from 
member countries.  There were similar meetings of the trade 
ministers. FUREY