The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), founded in 1975, represents 15 West African member states. Its mission is to promote economic integration in "all fields of economic activity, particularly industry, transport, telecommunications, energy, agriculture, natural resources, commerce, monetary and financial questions, social and cultural matters." ECOWAS undertakes an extensive range of work to coordinate policies, standards and systems across West Africa. USAID’s partnership with ECOWAS aligns with the aims of the U.S. Government’s global hunger and food security initiative, Feed the Future: supporting local countries to develop their own agriculture sectors to generate opportunities for economic growth and trade.

This publicly shared document provides information gathered from the Stakeholders Meeting (January 13, 2016) that introduced the RHO Concept Note and discussion around key questions such as achieving scalable impact in Family Planning and HIV, engaging more partners, and learning how treatment coverage can be improved in West Africa. The discussion, inputs, and resulting themes were utilized during the RHO Project Activity Design (PAD) Planning Retreat on January 26 - 27, 2016 and will continue to influence the direction of RHO activities. The RHO is publicly sharing this document and encourages comments and feedback from all interested parties and stakeholders on the West Africa Regional Health Office Concept Paper or this report via accraaidwarhopublic-dl@usaid.gov.