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Ghanaians voted in an election seen as a close fight between President Nana Akufo-Addo and his longtime rival John Mahama, in a country long viewed a beacon of stability in a troubled region.
\t On Friday, internet and international calls were cut off across the West African nation in anticipation of the election results, according to locals and international observers in the capital, Conakry.
\t This was the third time that Conde matched-up against Diallo. Before the election, observers raised concerns that an electoral dispute could reignite ethnic tensions between Guinea's largest ethnic groups.
Yoruba Americans are Americans of Yoruba descent. The Yoruba people (Yoruba: Àwọ̀n ọ́mọ́ Yorùbá) are an ethnic group originating in southwestern Nigeria and southern Benin in West Africa.
The first Yoruba people who arrived to the United States were imported as slaves from Nigeria and Benin during the Atlantic slave trade.[2] [3] This ethnicity of the slaves was one of the main origins of present-day Nigerians who arrived to the United States, along with the Igbo and Hausa. In addition, native slaves of current Benin hailed from peoples such as Nago (Yoruba subgroup,[4] although exported mainly by Spanish,[5] when Louisiana was Spanish) -, Ewe, Fon and Gen. Many of the slaves imported to the modern United States from Benin were sold by the King of Dahomey, in Whydah.[4] [6] [note 1]
The slaves brought with them their cultural practices, languages, cuisine[8] and religious beliefs rooted in spirit and ancestor worship.[9] So, the manners of the Yoruba, Fon, Gen and Ewe of Benin were key elements of Louisiana Voodoo.[10] Also Haitians, who migrated to Louisiana in the late nineteenth century and also contributed to Voodoo of this state, have the Yoruba[11] and Ewe as their main origins. The Yoruba, and some northern Nigerian ethnic groups, had tribal facial identification marks. These could have assisted a returning slave in relocating his or her ethnic group, but few slaves escaped the colonies. In the colonies, masters tried to dissuade the practice of tribal customs. They also sometimes mixed people of different ethnic groups to make it more difficult for them to communicate and bond together in rebellion.[12]
After the slavery abolition in 1865, many modern Nigerian immigrants have come to the United States to pursue educational opportunities in undergraduate and post-graduate institutions. This was possible because in the 1960s and 1970s, after the Biafra War, Nigerias government funded scholarships for Nigerian students, and many of them were admitted to American universities. While this was happening,
In the following article Dr. Clarence Spigner, Professor of Public Health at the University of Washington, Seattle, describes the life of the first patient to die of Ebola on U.S. soil and the larger crisis of Ebola in West Africa. He views it as a consequence of a long history of disease, poverty, and underfunded health care systems in the West African nations of Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia which are at the center of the 2014 epidemic.
On September 20, 2014, a forty-two year-old Liberian native, Thomas Eric Duncan, arrived in Dallas, Texas from a plane flight that originated in Monrovia, Liberia. Duncan came to the United States ostensibly to reunite with his estranged teenaged son and the boy’s mother, Louise Troh, who had at one time been his girlfriend in Liberia. Troh and her son lived in Dallas.
Unknown before that point, Duncan entered the international public consciousness because he had flown from the hot zone of the Ebola virus outbreak then occurring in West Africa. On March 30, 2014, Liberia reported two cases of people with the Ebola disease. Six months later on September 30, over 3,000 people had died from Ebola in West Africa including more than 1,000 in Liberia alone. Duncan, who would be the first reported case of Ebola in the United States and as of this writing, the only fatality, was symptom-free and not contagious when he left Liberia by way of Brussels, Belgium and Washington, D.C.
The deadly Ebola disease has symptoms similar to the mosquito-borne infectious malaria. Both malaria and Ebola are endemic to Africa, though malaria is now far more widespread and dangerous. So is West Nile Disease which like malaria is mosquito-borne and was first identified in 1937 in the East African nation of Uganda.
Unlike those diseases, Ebola is spread by physical contact with an infected person or animal. The virus is not airborne. The rapid spread of Ebola and the even more rapid spread of fear of a worldwide distribution of the Ebola virus comes from the knowledge that diseases like
Subsequently, government reserved 425 hospital beds and five ventilators for COVID-19 at one of the tertiary care hospitals in the capital, Harare, and is upgrading and refurbishing infectious diseases hospitals around the country.
Apart from increasing hospital capacity for COVID-19 cases, the response in Zimbabwe has included public awareness campaigns, promotion of social distancing including banning public gatherings, closing schools and colleges, and culminated in a 21-day general lockdown, which was later extended by 14 days.
The nascent SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa has not followed the usual script of infectious diseases, of being predominantly found in impoverished areas.
Older age has been consistently associated with heightened mortality from differences in the population age structure can lead to dramatic differences in mortality for COVID-19 disease[18] Thus, it is reasonable to anticipate a much lower mortality from COVID-19 in sub-Saharan Africa, compared to Europe and North America, where there is a much larger proportion of older people.
A potential source of higher than anticipated mortality from COVID-19 disease in sub-Saharan Africa is the high burden of HIV infection [5].
Deprived of work and access to aid, thousands of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa living in Morocco are struggling to make ends meet under Covid-19 restrictions.
“The misery is across the board,” said Ousmane Ba, head of the Collective of sub-Saharan Communities in Morocco.
The north African kingdom has long been a transit country for migrants and refugees seeking a better life in Europe, and it has also become a host country for many.
Abdoulaye Diop, head of the Federation of sub-Saharan associations in Morocco, organises food basket distribution within the Senegalese community.
“Today you eat rice, tomorrow pasta, the day after rice,” said Eouani Mambia Morelline, the 40-year-old Congolese head of a collective for migrant women in Morocco.
In response to COVID-19 school closures and adherence to social distancing, UNESCO and many governments and agencies have recommended the use of distance learning, open educational applications and online learning to reduce disruption to education.
Despite the best efforts of government, schools and parents there will be learning losses for almost everybody and worsened educational outcomes for the poor.
We applied the learning curve scenario methodology developed by the World Bank to the South African Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study data to illustrate the patterns of expected learning losses over the next few months due to school closures and disruptions.
While we don't know the exact value of the learning losses, these graphs illustrate that learning loss patterns will be different for learners in different school types.
The sad and uncomfortable truth is that for South Africa, with low and unequal achievement scores, the longer social distancing is in place the bigger the learning losses for learners, especially the most disadvantaged, thereby deepening inequalities.
Ahead of the September 19 and October 10 governorship elections in Edo and Ondo states respectively, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has warned politicians planning to undermine or disrupt the processes.
The INEC boss assured of the commission's commitment to free, fair and credible elections and warned that where an election was disrupted, the commission would not make a declaration on the outcome due to lack of adherence to guiding rules of the election.
He said, \"Where the election is disrupted and the commission cannot vouch for the integrity of the process, we will not go ahead to make any declaration.\"
He said there would be no point in making a declaration in such situation because the commission would not endorse fraud or function outside the minimum standard set for the conduct of credible elections anywhere.
On his part, the Executive Director of CDD Ghana, Henry Prempeh, said the COVID-19 pandemic had compressed elections in the country.
During the lean season in June and August, more than 21 million people across West Africa \"will struggle to feed themselves\", she explained, adding Gambia and Benin to the list of countries in need.
\"An additional 20 million people could struggle to feed themselves due to the socio-economic impact of COVID-19 in the next six months, doubling the number of food-insecure to 43 million in this region\", the WFP official added.
Highest forced displacement in Africa
Highlighting people's vulnerabilities, Babar Baloch from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), described West and central Africa as \"one of largest displacement situations in Africa…we are talking about 5.6 million internally displaced people, more than 1.3 million refugees and 1.6 million stateless.\"
The UN refugee agency has repeatedly called for greater support for increasing numbers of people forced to flee for their lives amid renewed conflict in West Africa's turbulent Sahel and Lake Chad region.
On Monday, the agency condemned attacks on 2 May on Malian refugees in Burkina Faso – \"reportedly by the country's security forces\", in Mentao refugee camp in which at least 32 people were injured.
Sarah Forbes Bonetta, a princess of the Egbado clan of the Yoruba people, is best known as the goddaughter of Queen Victoria of Great Britain. Bonetta was born in 1843 in what is now southwest Nigeria. Her parents names are unknown as are the names of her siblings who were all killed in the 1847 slave raid that made Bonetta a captive.
Bonetta’s village of Okeadan was attacked by King Gezo of Dahomey, the most notorious slave trading monarch in West Africa in the early 19th century. Intent on capturing slaves and killing those not taken, Gezo’s men seized the four year old girl. For reasons that are unclear, the girl was not killed and remained at Gezo’s Court until 1849 when British Commander Frederick Forbes’s landed the HMS Bonetta in Dahomey to persuade Gezo to give up slave raiding and trading. Forbes noticed the young girl and bargained for her life. He persuaded King Gezo to “give” her to Queen Victoria, saying “She would be a present from the King of the Blacks to the Queen of the Whites.” The girl remained with Forbes in West Africa for the next year where she was baptized and given the name Sarah Forbes Bonetta. Forbes wrote that “She is a perfect genius; she now speaks English well, and [has] great talent for music… She is far in advance of any white child of her age in aptness of learning, and strength of mind and affection…”
Sarah Forbes Bonetta was taken to Great Britain and met Queen Victoria on November 9th, 1850 at Windsor Castle. The Queen was impressed by her intellect and entrusted her care to the Schoen family in Palm Cottage, Gillingham when Forbes died early in 1851. The Queen declared Sarah her goddaughter and paid her tutorial expenses. Young Sarah became a regular visitor to Windsor Castle.
Less than a year after she arrived, however, young Bonetta developed a cough believed to be caused by the climate of Great Britain. Queen Victoria arranged for her to be sent to what she believed was a better climate for Bonetta in Sierra Leone. There she was educated at the Female
As Africa battles COVID-19 experts believe the pandemic will have an impact on elections and democracy in various African countries.
He is joining us from Washington D.C. United States of America where he has been able to co-ordinate, organize and advise international election observation missions in almost all African countries working alongside heads of state and government, ministers, elected officials and civic leaders.
But in countries that are committed to democratic governance I am sure that the leaders, elected officials, political party leaders and civic leaders would find ways to work with their respective election commissions so that there could be inclusive processes that will have everyone giving their input in how elections and other political processes could be managed through this period of COVID-19.
I will say that in the past two decades, we have seen a number of African leaders who have come forward to be proponents of democratic governance and who have made efforts to make sure that political power can change hands through the ballot box and that elections can be organised in a meaningful way that give voice to citizens.
But the test is going to be to see how African governments can take measures to soften the economic blow of the pandemic and how they can also work with other stakeholders to make sure that there is economic relief for the companies that will create jobs, for the private sector that will create jobs that young people still find opportunities in the post
COVID period and that countries can be stabilised in a way that will allow them to bounce back both economically and politically as well.
By 1921 the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) was well on its way to becoming the largest predominately black organization in the world. Marcus Garvey, the UNIAs founder, however, already recognized W.E.B. Du Bois and the NAACP as its chief rival. In his closing night speech to the second UNIA convention in New York, Garvey lays out his vision of globally emancipated Africans. Garveys speech appears below.
May it please your Highness the Potentate, Right Honorable Members of the Executive Council, Deputies and Delegates to the Second International Convention of Negroes of the World, Ladies and Gentlemen: - We are assembled here tonight to bring to a close our great convention of thirty-one days and thirty-one nights. Before we separate ourselves and take our departure to the different parts of the world from which we came, I desire to give you a message; one that you will, I hope, take home and propagate among the scattered millions of Africa’s sons and daughters.
MARCUS GARVEY SPEAKS
We have been here, sent here by the good will of the 4000,000,000 Negroes of the world to legislate in their interests, and in the time allotted to us we did our best to enact laws and to frame laws that in our judgment, we hope, will help solve the great problem that confronts us universally. The Universal Negro Improvement Association seeks to emancipate the Negro everywhere, industrially, educationally, politically and religiously. It also seeks a free and redeemed Africa. It has a great struggle ahead; it has a gigantic task to face. Nevertheless, as representatives of the Negro people of the world we have undertaken the task of freeing the 4000,000,000 of our race, and of freeing our bleeding Motherland, Africa. We counseled with each other during the thirty-one days....and out of all we did, and out of all we said, we have come to the one conclusion – that speedily Africa must be redeemed! We have come to the conclusion that speedily there must be an emancipated Negro race everywhere; and on going
The Council of Federated Organization was founded in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962, COFO included the statewide organizations of three national civil rights groups, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) led by Bob Moses, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) under Tom Gaither, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The organization was […]
Chartered in 1672, the Royal African Company was a royally chartered company which had a legally based monopoly on English trade to West Africa until 1698. The monopoly specifically extended through five thousand miles of the western coast from Cape Sallee (in contemporary Morocco) to the Cape of Good Hope (in what is now South Africa).
The Royal African Company traded mainly for gold and slaves (the majority of whom were sent to English colonies in the Americas). Headquarters were located at the Cape Coast Castle (located in modern-day Ghana). The Royal African Company also maintained many forts and factories in other locations such as Sierra Leone, the Slave Coast, the River Gambia, and additional areas on the Gold Coast.
The Royal African Company lost its monopoly in 1698, although it continued to engage in the slave trade until 1731. It was replaced by the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa in 1752.
Royally chartered companies like the Royal African Company were important tools in the opening of the African continent to slave trade and later imperial colonizing ambitions. The Royal African Company was the second such attempt by Parliament, as they had chartered the Royal Adventurers into Africa in 1660. This first attempt failed due to factors relating to a war with Holland.
Sources:
Alexander M. Zukas, “Chartered Companies,” in Encyclopedia of WesternColonialism since 1450 ed. Thomas Benjamin (Detroit: MacmillanReference USA, 2007); K.G. Davis, Royal African Company (London:Longmans, Green and Co., 1957); Robert Law, ed., The English in WestAfrica 1691-1699: The Local Correspondence of the Royal African Companyof England 1681-1699 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Contributor(s):
Bilow, Ali
University of Washington, Seattle
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Concerned about the spread of the coronavirus, many smugglers, armed groups and communities are imposing their own restrictions on movement.
New evidence gathered by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime suggests growing hostility towards human smuggling in regions where the activity is deeply entrenched in the political economy.
Meanwhile in southern Libya, Tebu militants have become markedly more hostile to human smuggling and intercepted smugglers coming through Niger.
This change created a considerable disjunct between Niger's legal position on human smuggling - making it punishable by imprisonment of 5-30 years - and the popular perception that smugglers merely provide a transport service for migrants looking for a better life.
In fact, many smugglers have decided to continue their operations despite the pandemic, including in southern Libya, northern Niger and Chad.
Queen Nzingha, amazon queen of matamba west africa, joins the ancestors on this day. Nzingha was a warrior queen who waged war again Europeans. Her formation of strategic alliances and fighting prowess urged other great african leaders totake a stand against the colonialism/imperialistic regimes of Europeans.
But now the contraction in the Chinese economy has paused the illegal logging in the Outamba-Kilimi national park – more than 1,100 square km of park protected by 27 unarmed rangers.
“No Chinese men are coming here anymore, and they’re the only people to come here and help us by buying what we cut,” said Ishmael Sessay, who has been harvesting timber from Sierra Leone’s oldest park since last year.
Logging for domestic use is allowed, but the government says logging in the park goes far beyond what is needed to satisfy home demand, and it does not have the resources to stop it.
“I feel pain in my heart when I see this forest cut,” said Musa Kamara, who worked as a ranger in the park from 1981 to 2018.
In a related development, Nigeria is facing life without oil revenue as oil prices, now around $20 a barrel, have already skidded to the zero point.
”
Total confirmed cases = 7,303 (new cases = 186)
Total recoveries = 2,414
Total deaths = 34
Active cases = 4,857
\tFigures valid as of close of day May 27, 2020
\t
May 27: Accra case count pass 5,000; MP infection controversy
\tThe case count passed 7,000 when an additional 309 cases were reported.
Total confirmed cases = 7,117 (new cases = 309)
Total recoveries = 2,317
Active cases = 4,766
\tFigures valid as of close of day May 26, 2020
May 26: 6,808 cases, further easing of restrictions expected
\tA major religious group is advocating a phased lifting of remaining restrictions in the country.
Total confirmed cases = 6,683 (new cases = 66)
Total recoveries = 1,978 (new = 20)
Total deaths = 32
May 23: 6,617 cases, Ashanti region pass 1,000 mark
\tThe case count in the Ashanti region crossed the 1,000 mark according to latest stats released this Saturday.
Total confirmed cases = 6,617 (new cases = 131)
Total recoveries = 1,978 (new = 27)
Total deaths = 31
\tFigures valid as of May 21, 2020
May 22: 6,486 cases, NDC jabs EC
\tMain opposition NDC continued their collision with the elections body over the compilation of a new voters register ahead of December 2020 polls.
Total confirmed cases = 6,269 (new cases = 173)
Total recoveries = 1,898 (new = 125)
Active cases = 4,340
May 20: Cases pass 6,000 mark, govt eyes COVID-Organics
\tGhana’s case count passed 6,000 mark reaching 6,096 on Tuesday according to tallies released by the Ghana Health Service.
A journalist, radical activist, and theoretician, George Padmore did more than perhaps any other single individual to shape the theory and discourse of Pan-African anti-imperialism in the first half of the twentieth century.
Born Malcolm Nurse in Trinidad in 1901, Padmore moved to the United States in 1925 to study at Fisk and Howard Universities. In 1928 he dropped out of Howards law school and joined the American Communist Party. Quickly rising in Party ranks as an expert on race and imperialism, Padmore moved to Moscow, USSR in 1929 to head the Cominterns International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers and to edit the Negro Worker. In 1931 he published the influential pamphlet, The Life and Struggles of Negro Toilers. In 1933 the Comintern suspended publication of the Negro Worker and disbanded the Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers, prompting Padmore to split acrimoniously with the Party. In subsequent years Padmore would become a fervent anti-Communist, denouncing the Cominterns alleged manipulation of black freedom struggles in his 1956 book Pan-Africanism or Communism? However, throughout his life he continued to unite with activists and trade unionists on the radical left around the issue of anti-colonialism.
Padmore settled in London, UK in 1936. There he helped foster a radical milieu of Pan-Africanist intellectuals that included Padmores childhood friend, the Trotskyist theorist C.L.R. James. In 1936 Padmore published How Britain Rules Africa, followed a year later by Africa and World Peace. Along with I.T.A. Wallace-Johnson, Padmore and James founded the International African Service Bureau in 1937. Padmore guided the bureau through the late 1930s and early 1940s until in merged into the Pan-African Federation in 1944. He was a principal organizer of the Manchester Pan-African Congress in 1945, which helped lay the foundation for postwar African colonial liberation movements. Throughout this period Padmores articles and essays were printed regularly in the Chicago Defender, the
Europeans have been interested in African geography since the time of the Greek and Roman Empires. Around 150 C.E., Ptolemy created a map of the world that included the Nile and the great lakes of East Africa. In the Middle Ages, the large Ottoman Empire blocked European access to Africa and its trade goods, but Europeans still learned about Africa from Islamic maps and travelers, like Ibn Battuta.
The Catalan Atlas created in 1375, which includes many African coastal cities, the Nile River, and other political and geographical features, shows how much Europe knew about North and West Africa.
By the 1400s, Portuguese sailors, backed by Prince Henry the Navigator, began exploring the West coast of Africa looking for a mythical Christian king named Prestor John and a way to the wealth of Asia that avoided the Ottomans and the powerful empires of South West Asia. By 1488, the Portuguese had charted a way around the south African Cape and in 1498, Vasco da Gama reached Mombasa, in what is today Kenya, where he encountered Chinese and Indian merchants. Europeans made few inroads into Africa, though, until the 1800s, due to the strong African states they encountered, tropical diseases, and a relative lack of interest. Europeans instead grew rich trading gold, gum, ivory, and slaves with coastal merchants.
In the late 1700s, a group of British men, inspired by the Enlightenment ideal of learning, decided that Europe should know much more about Africa. They formed the African Association in 1788 to sponsor expeditions to the continent. With the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1808, European interest in the interior of Africa grew quickly.
Geographical Societies were formed and sponsored expeditions. The Parisian Geographical Society offered a 10,000 franc prize to the first explorer who could reach the town of Timbuktu (in present day Mali) and return alive. The new scientific interest in Africa was never wholly philanthropic, however. Financial and political support for exploration
The first term of Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina as the president of the African Development Bank (AfDB) came to an end in May 2020, he is also due for re-election for a second term.
While the cost to income ratio of the bank is 41 per cent, the comparable figure for the World Bank is 113 per cent, meaning the African Development Bank(AfDB) is three times more efficient on its administrative costs compared to the World Bank.
The African Development Bank(AfDB), launched the Africa Investment Forum in 2018, in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The bank's High 5 strategic priorities: Light up and Power Africa; Feed Africa; Industrialise Africa; Integrate Africa; and Improve the quality of life of the people of Africa, have been acclaimed globally as the key for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in Africa and the Agenda 2063 of the African Union.
Following the approval of GCI-7, bank expects to help African countries to achieve the following development results in the next 8 years:105 million people would get access to electricity, 204 million people would benefit from improved access to agricultural technologies to achieve food security,23 million people would benefit from investee private sector companies,252 million people would gain access to improved transportservices, and
128 million people would benefit from improved water and sanitation.
In 2007, Ambassador John L. Withers II, a second generation diplomat, was appointed by President George H.W. Bush to serve as ambassador to Albania. Withers was born in 1948 in Guilford, North Carolina, to John L. Withers, Sr. and Daisy P. Withers. His father had briefly worked as a political science professor but is best known for his service as a diplomat for the United States Agency for International Development. His mother was a homemaker, raising John II and his brother Gregory. Withers, whose grandfather, Robert Baxter Withers, and father fought in World War I and World War II, respectively, spent his childhood where his father was stationed, in Laos, Thailand, Burma, Korea, Ethiopia, and Kenya, witnessing, first-hand, the struggle for Southeast Asian and East African independence.
Withers graduated from Harvard University in 1971 with a Bachelor’s Degree in History. In 1975, he earned his Master’s Degree in East Asian Studies from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. A year after graduating from Yale University (1983), with a Doctor of Philosophy Degree in Modern Chinese History, Withers began pursuing his Foreign Service career.
From 1984 to 1993, Withers’s path to the ambassadorship was unusual. He served in typical junior officer posts that ranged from Political Officer (PO) to Desk Officer (DO) but he was also posted in key countries to U.S. diplomacy in Northern/Eastern Europe, West Africa, and Southeast Asia, a rare combination of geographic areas for any diplomat. In this period he served at U.S. Embassies at The Hague, Netherlands (PO, 1985-1986), Lagos, Nigeria (PO, 1987-1990), and Moscow, Russia (PO, 1991-1993). At the State Department he was Desk Offer in the Office of Chinese Affairs (1986-1988), and in the Office of Northern European Affairs specifically assigned to Ireland and Iceland (1993).
As senior diplomat, Withers assisted mission chiefs in the Office of the Deputy Secretary, as Special Assistant (1993-1996), and in the U.S. Embassy in Riga, Latvia, as Deputy Chief of Mission
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was created by the Treaty of Lagos in Lagos, Nigeria, on 28 May 1975. It was created to promote economic trade, national cooperation, and monetary union, for growth and development throughout West Africa.
A revised treaty intended to accelerate the integration of economic policy and improve political cooperation was signed on 24 July 1993. It sets out the goals of a common economic market, a single currency, the creation of a West African parliament, economic and social councils, and a court of justice, which primarily interprets and mediates disputes over ECOWAS policies and relations, but has the power to investigate alleged human rights abuses in member countries.
There are currently 15 member countries in the Economic Community of West African States. The founding members of ECOWAS were: Benin, Côte dIvoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania (left 2002), Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo, and Burkina Faso (which joined as Upper Volta). Cape Verde joined in 1977.
The structure of the Economic Community has changed several times over the years. As of 2015, ECOWAS listed seven active institutions: the Authority of Heads of State and Government (which is the leading body), the Council of Ministers, the Executive Commission (which is sub-divided into 16 departments), the Community Parliament, the Community Court of Justice, a body of Specialized Technical Committees, and the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development (EBID, also known as the Fund). The treaties also provide for an advisory Economic and Social Council, but ECOWAS does not list this as part of its current structure.
In addition to these seven institutions, the Economic Community includes three specialized institutions (the West African Health Organisation, West African Monetary Agency, and the Inter-governmental Action Group against Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing in West Africa) and three specialized agencies (ECOWAS Gender and Development
