ECOWAS Business News

October 14, 2018 To make trading between African countries easier, West African countries have joined forces to interlink their payment system. The Director-General, West African Monetary Institute, Mrs. Ngozi Egbuna , made this known on Sunday in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria on the sideline of the IMF/WB Annual Meetings in Bali. She revealed that with funding from the African Export-Import Bank , the Institute was currently working to link the payment system of Gambia, Guinea, Ghana, Liberia and Nigeria. She said that once the linkage was done, West African States would be closer to achieving their dream of migrating to a single currency , known as the ECO. Egbuna said that the linkage was the second phase of the Institute's payment systems infrastructure project in the region. She recalled that between 2012 and 2016, the African Development Bank funded the creation of payment systems in Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia and Gambia, who at the time, did not have. ...

The Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF), Africa's leading entrepreneurship philanthropy, is partnering with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, the German Government's Agency for International Cooperation. GIZ will support the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme to empower 210 young African entrepreneurs, focusing specifically on female entrepreneurs and tech-enabled businesses . The Entrepreneurship Programme of TEF was launched in 2015, having supported more than 4,000 entrepreneurs with seed capital pan-African wide. The announcement is coming ahead of the largest gathering of African entrepreneurs – The Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Forum – which will hold on October 25, 2018 in Lagos, Nigeria. The Forum will celebrate the 2018 cohort of the Foundation's beneficiaries . The joint partnership will equip more African entrepreneurs with the skills needed to build strong and sustainable businesses , while providing them wi...

UNRISD is delighted to announce the full line-up for its major international conference Overcoming Inequalities in a Fractured World: Between Elite Power and Social Mobilization , taking place in Geneva on 7–9 November 2018. Highlights include leading thinkers François Bourguignon and Vandana Shiva as keynote speakers, and a UN-Civil Society roundtable, representing a unique opportunity to hear civil society activists and senior international development specialists at the UN debate the political barriers to transformative change and discuss how we can build the strategic alliances needed to overcome them and push for more sustainable development. For this Conference, UNRISD has again been able to mobilize untapped research : from the Global South, from young scholars, from women researchers, and from practitioners. Their voices and unique perspectives on development problems are a likely source of innovative knowledge and solutions and promise to inspire the debates on sustainabl...

Burkina Faso, Senegal and Togo need far-reaching reforms of their infrastructure and legal systems to benefit from e-commerce, new studies of the West African countries by UNCTAD have revealed. The reports will be presented at a regional e-commerce workshop organized by UNCTAD and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on 9–10 October . "Studies carried out by UNCTAD show that vast reform projects are needed for Burkina Faso, Senegal and Togo to seize fully the development opportunities offered by e-commerce, and that they will require ambitious actions on the part of governments. UNCTAD is here to help them," UNCTAD Deputy Secretary-General Isabelle Durant said. "This is a win-win strategy, which must be pursued because e-commerce is now a key gateway to foreign markets ." The workshop, the first step in the preparation of a regional plan , will be inaugurated by Ms. Durant in the presence of the ECOWAS agriculture, wa...

Media Sound Hamburg, in partnership with ACCES 2018, is calling on young Kenyan film music composers, video game music composers and sound designers to apply for a summer school that will take place in Hamburg, German y, between 9 and 18 August 2019. Media Sound Hamburg lecturer Stephan Eicke will be at ACCES 2018 in Nairobi where he will conduct a sound design workshop. The successful candidate will get to attend various masterclasses, workshops, forums and special events while interacting with international film composers and industry professionals. Lecturers who are already confirmed for Media Sound Hamburg 2019 include Randy Thom (Apocalypse Now, Return of the Jedi, The War of the Worlds), Glenn Kiser (Avatar, The Incredibles, Pirates of the Caribbean), Sue Harding (Quantum of Solace, In Bruges, I, Daniel Blake) and Adam Mendez (Florence Foster Jenkins, Exodus: Gods and Kings, Jason Bourne). The application deadline is 4 November 2018. The winner of the scholarship will be announce...

A report published in September 2018 by UN Environment and Interpol states that environmental crimes are on the rise around the world. In Africa, measures are beginning to be deployed on the ground to stop the phenomenon, which is rusting the economy, particularly tourism. It is not on the front page of all media, unlike drug trafficking or money laundering. Yet environmental crime is presented as a canker worm in the global economy . A report, published in September 2018, by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Interpol presents the quantified state of affairs. "It is widely recognised that environmental crimes are among the most profitable forms of transnational criminal activity. Their value in 2016 was estimated between US $91 billion and US $259 billion. And the rapporteurs went on to say: " This is probably the fourth most lucrative criminal activity after drug trafficking, counterfeiting and human trafficking. According to the UNEP, environmental crim...