The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) will hold an Investment Roundtable Conference next year to mobilise financial resources to fund projects intended to develop the Sahel Region.

The Conference, to be hosted by the Ivorian government, will be the first major step to seek financial commitments from the international community since the regional body agreed to a $4.7 billion development plan aimed at transforming the Sahel region into a development hub in response to insecurity, instability and frequent threats in that part of the continent.

This was announced by the ECOWAS Commissioner for Macroeconomic Policy and Economic Research, Dr. Kofi Konadu Apraku, at the just-ended Annual Meeting of the Sub Regional Coordination Mechanism (SRCM) 2018 in the Senegalese capital, Dakar.

The Dakar meeting was under the United Nations Economic Commission and was designed to promote dialogue and collaboration among partners who are interested in the development of the Sahel region.

According to Dr. Apraku, the Sahel region is faced with a combination of multiple factors of instability ranging from serious security threats, illicit trafficking, money laundering, unplanned migration, environmental challenges and the spread of violent extremism from radical armed groups.

He said the situation is further exacerbated by the vulnerability of the Sahel countries to climate change; where irregular rainfall and persistent drought have led to recurrent food crisis. In 2017, it was reported that more than 30 million of people in the region suffered from food insecurity and 4.9 million fled from their homes as Internally Displaced People (IPDs) or as refugees.

“ECOWAS has always believed that the problems in Sahel Region are due to economic under development, insecurity and negative environmental factors. Indeed, these vulnerabilities of the region coupled with its isolation, due to inadequate infrastructure, have further hampered the economic and all other development activities and undermined the social and environmental conditions in the Region,” Dr Apraku said.

The ECOWAS Commissioner said the continued security threat of the Sahel situation to the rest of West Africa, necessitated ECOWAS Heads of States to develop specific strategies for the stabilisation and development of the Sahel, based on four pillars in the areas of (i) transport infrastructure, (ii) Resilience and food security, (iii) education, (iv) peace, security and good governance.

He, however, said ECOWAS was still perusing funding for the initiative captured in the Action Plan of 2016-2020 which was to have seen the implementation of 31 projects in the areas of transport infrastructure, agriculture, education and others, with a proposed total cost of US$ 4.75 billion.

Dr Apraku expressed delight that through Member States of the G5 Sahel (Burkina, Faso, Mali and Niger), ECOWAS has made good progress in the areas of ensuring peace, security and good governance in the Sahel region.

“Taking a glimpse into the future, ECOWAS believes that effective coordination of all activities provides the best assurances for dealing with the problems in the Sahel Region. In this regard, it is important to take advantage of the existing opportunities in the region, including the development of the huge solar and wind power generation, exploitation of the huge water and natural resources and vast agricultural lands for the creation of jobs and facilitate economic transformation of the Sahel Region,” Dr Apraku told delegates.