Faced with the combined challenges of civil insecurity, conflicts and climate change in the region, to which the coronavirus pandemic has been added, ECOWAS and its partners are mobilized, through a regional Emergency Action Plan, to address the impacts of the pandemic on food and nutrition security in the region.

The current health consequences of the coronavirus pandemic have attracted ECOWAS Member States’ attention and led most of them to adopt drastic measures to counter its spread, resulting into significant loss of income for countries and the degradation of vulnerable populations livelihoods.

The impacts of the Covid-19 come on top of civil, food and nutritional insecurity, but also to the dreaded threats from pests and the resurgence of transboundary animal diseases. In addition, the pandemic has exacerbated the risk of food shortages and challenged the region to ensure its food and nutrition security.

During a meeting held on June 18 this year by the Regional Mechanism for the Prevention and Management of Food Crisis (PREGEC) in the Sahel and West Africa regions, nearly 17 million people were considered to be in food and nutrition insecurity for the period of June to August 2020 in the Sahel and West Africa region. In addition to these populations in need of emergency food assistance, nearly 51 million people under food stress are likely to fall into food and nutrition crisis under the combined eects of the security and health crises, as well as the desert locust threat, if nothing is done to protect their livelihoods.

In such a context of widespread crises, ECOWAS, in consultation with UEMOA and CILSS, organized on March 31, 2020 an exceptional online Conference of ECOWAS, Chad and Mauritania Ministers in charge of Agriculture and Food, on the impact of the pandemic and crop pests on food and nutrition security.

The ministers' recommendations led to the preparation of a Regional Emergency Action Plan defining the measures to be taken to support Member States in their efforts.

This Plan is built around 4 strategic actions namely, (i) facilitating access to agricultural inputs and establishing eective social safety nets, (ii) increasing the Regional Food Security Reserve response capacity and that of other reserves to 300,000 tons of food products, (iii)preventing, monitoring and controlling pests and (iv) preventing, monitoring and controlling transboundary animal diseases.

ECOWAS calls on all its partners to coordinate their actions and to act now to support the region and countries in their Covid-19 response plans implementation.