ECOWAS institutions, technical and development partners met in Accra on 15 and 16 October 2026 for the second meeting of the ECOWAS Disinformation Working Group, themed “Towards a Coordinated ECOWAS Response to Information Integrity Challenges.”
The two-day session was organised by the Communications Directorate of the ECOWAS Commission, according to a report from the Economic Community of West African States.
Participants were expected to review progress since the group’s inaugural meeting, discuss its institutionalisation, clarify mandates and responsibilities, identify priority actions and assess technical and institutional capacity gaps.
In welcome remarks, the Director of Communication of the ECOWAS Commission, Joel Ahofodji, said information integrity was strategically important to regional peace, stability, democratic governance and integration.
He noted that rapid advances in digital technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, present significant opportunities while creating new risks for institutional credibility, social cohesion and public trust.
Ahofodji said ECOWAS needed to strengthen its capacity to anticipate, detect and respond effectively to information threats affecting the region.
He described the meeting as an opportunity to reinforce coordination among ECOWAS institutions, clarify the roles and responsibilities of designated focal points, identify priority capacity-building needs and establish next steps for collective action.
Speaking on behalf of the President of the ECOWAS Commission, General Birame Diop, the ECOWAS Resident Representative in Ghana, Ambassador Mohammed Lawan Gana, welcomed participants and thanked the Government and people of Ghana for their hospitality and continued commitment to regional integration, peace and cooperation.
Gana said misinformation, disinformation and manipulated content increasingly threaten democratic governance, social cohesion, peace and security, public health and regional integration.
He cautioned that false narratives, coordinated influence operations, online impersonation and malicious information manipulation can erode public trust, fuel tensions and undermine confidence in institutions.
The meeting received goodwill messages from representatives of the Danish Embassy in Nigeria, the European Union Delegation in Ghana, the Spanish Embassy and the German Embassy in Ghana.
German Cooperation, through the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), and Spanish Cooperation, through the Fundación Internacional y para Iberoamérica de Administración y Políticas Públicas (FIAP), were recognised for their support to ECOWAS efforts in this area.
The programme was structured around institutional coordination and governance, strategic planning, capacity development and partnership alignment.
Discussions also covered advancing the ECOWAS Information Integrity Roadmap 2026–2030, identifying opportunities for joint programming and resource mobilisation, and strengthening collaboration with partners working to counter electoral disinformation and promote peaceful democratic participation.
The agenda included a session on FIAP’s Support to ECOWAS on Peace, Security and Governance project, with attention to collaboration with fact-checkers and media organisations and the ELECT PEACE collaborative digital platform.
The meeting closed its planned programme with discussions on next steps, follow-up mechanisms and future Working Group meetings.
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