Sahel and West Africa Club

The Sahel and West Africa Club (SWAC) is an international platform whose Secretariat is hosted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). OECD/SWAC produces and maps data, provides informed analyses and facilitates strategic dialogue, to help better anticipate transformations in the region and their territorial impacts. Through our retrospective and prospective approach, we promotes more contextualised policies as levers for regional integration, sustainable development and stability. Our areas of work include food dynamics, urbanisation, climate and security.

The core objective of SWAC's mandate is to contribute to the effectiveness of the actions taken by its Members by providing them with data and informed analyses and facilitating strategic dialogue, to help better anticipate transformations in the region and their territorial impacts. SWAC’s outputs feed the formulation processes of contextualised policies as levers for regional integration, sustainable development and stability. 

The Strategy and Policy Group (SPG) is composed of our Members who are responsible for governing and monitoring our work. They meet once a year to define SWAC’s work priorities, approve activity and financial reports as well as our Programme of Work and Budget. They also provide financial contributions for the implementation of our work programme and nominate our Honorary President. This position is currently held by Hadizatou Rosine Sori-Coulibaly. The SWAC Secretariat is in charge of implementing the work programme.

Our Members and financial partners are AFD (Agence française de développement), Austria, Belgium, Canada, CILSS (Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel), the ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) Commission, the European Commission, GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit), France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, the UEMOA (West African Economic and Monetary Union) Commission and the United States.