The first edition of the EU-funded West Africa Competitiveness Programme (WACOMP) newsletter has been released aiming to illustrate UNIDO’s overall engagement in the Programme thereby providing an overview of the regional and the five country components that are being implemented by UNIDO.

This newsletter provides highlights of the respective UNIDO projects, as well as concrete COVID-19 contingency activities on regional and national level that are being exemplified. This edition is the first release of a series of bulletins compiling highlights from the various WACOMP projects implemented with the technical assistance of UNIDO.

The West Africa Competitiveness Programme (WACOMP) is a partnership initiative between the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the European Union (EU). The overall objective of the Programme is to strengthen the competitiveness of West Africa and to enhance the countries’ integration into the regional and international trading system. WACOMP is funded through a EUR 120 million contribution from the Regional Indicative Programme (RIP) for West Africa (2014 – 2020) under the 11^th European Development Fund (EDF). It embraces the vision of the Third Industrial Development Decade for Africa (IDDA III) and is also aligned to UNIDO’s mandate of fostering Inclusive and Sustainable Industrial Development (ISID).

The 16 WACOMP country components are being implemented by selected specialized agencies or through national execution in the 15 ECOWAS member states and Mauritania, while the regional component is being led by the ECOWAS Commission with the technical assistance of UNIDO and the International Trade Centre (ITC). In addition to its regional component called the West Africa Competitiveness and Quality Infrastructure Project (WACQIP), UNIDO has been so far entrusted as implementing partner in 5 countries: Ghana, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea Bissau and The Gambia. The total of all WACOMP projects implemented by UNIDO amounts to EUR 28 million which positions the Organization as the top international co-operation agency among the WACOMP technical partners while additional country projects are still expected.  

Read the newsletter here.

For more information contact Bernard Bau (B.Bau@unido.org) 

DIRECTORATE OF DIGITALIZATION, TECHNOLOGY AND AGRI-BUSINESS (DTA)

UNITED NATIONS INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT ORGANIZATION (UNIDO)

Vienna International Centre, PO Box 300, A-1400 Vienna, Austria

dta@unido.org