Similarly to the 2008 crisis, the current coronavirus pandemic is a reminder that food reserves are a major tool for meeting the emergency food needs of populations, deployed as part of social safety nets.

The new forms of vulnerability induced by the combination of poverty, climate change, demography and civil insecurity have been severely aggravated by the Covid-19 consequences. They reconfirm that the regional food security storage strategy is a key instrument, both for preventing and managing food and nutrition crises and for helping to increase supply, structure value chains and organize agricultural markets.

To provide support to countries whose budgets are under heavy pressure in their eorts to respond to the health and security crisis in a context of declining tax revenues subsequent to economic activities disruption, the ECOWAS Commission is strongly committed to providing humanitarian assistance to the most affected vulnerable populations in its Member States.

In this perspective, it has mobilized one (1) million US dollars from its emergency humanitarian fund and is acting as a third party payer to rapidly destock 2 190 tons of cereals from the Regional Food Security Reserve (RFSR) and provide food assistance to vulnerable populations in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Nigeria. It has also decided, jointly with the European Union, to mobilize €2.2 million from the contingencies of the EU-funded West Africa Food Security Storage Support Project, to increase food assistance to the targeted countries by mobilizing more stocks from the Regional Reserve in strict compliance with the rules and procedures in force.

To recall, these four countries alone account for more than 80% of the populations in a dicult food situation, including internally displaced persons and children affected by malnutrition. This support includes a total quantity of cereals estimated at 4, 993 tons (rice, maize, millet and sorghum) for Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Nigeria, and a combination of 4 nutritional products (pumpy nuts, supercereals, supercereals plus, enriched maize flour) worth 430 000 euros for Niger.

This operation is being carried out in two folds: an emergency mobilization of the RFSR stocks and additional purchases of cereals directly from producer organizations. It is supplemented by purchases of nutritional products

from pre-qualified companies that can supply the Regional Reserve with quality nutritional products. These two interventions make it possible to simultaneously test three strategic modalities not yet implemented with regard to the challenges related to the deployment of the Regional Reserve: the principle of the third party payer in the "RFSR" technical instrument interventions financing mechanism, the use of nutritional products in the response to crises and, finally, the procedure for direct purchases from producer organizations or professional cooperatives.

Considering the major role that the Regional Reserve can play in mitigating the eects of multiple crises on food and nutrition security, the region and its partners shall further deepen their reflection on the financing of the solidarityexerted by its mobilization for countries and populations in times of crisis.