The New Year brings about changes and our Regional Representative for West Africa, Gabriel Gyamfi returns to our Operations Team based in Southampton. Steve Sleep, Senior Responder, Trainer and former Chevron Australia secondee, takes over the role.
Gabriel has travelled extensively in West Africa visiting our members to deliver Annual Preparedness Reviews (APR) and new member integration workshops, along with attending conferences, joining the regional West and Central Africa (WACAF) Global Initiative (GI) and playing a valuable part in maintaining readiness with the OSRL regional WACAF response service.
This is not the last we will see of Gabriel in West Africa, as I am sure Gabriel and his fellow Ghanaians, Charles and Raphael, will be some of the first people called for incidents in West Africa. Why I hear you ask. Well, it’s all about ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States. Established May 28th, 1975 via the treaty of Lagos, ECOWAS is a 15-member regional group with a mandate of promoting economic integration in all fields of activity of the constituting countries. The Member countries which form ECOWAS are Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Cote d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Senegal and Togo. What this means for Ghanaian citizens is that they can travel freely within the ECOWAS countries without the need for a visa, making the ability to response to incidents in ECOWAS Member countries quick and straightforward.