Claim: President Adama Barrow has been appointed the new ECOWAS Chairman
Source: Facebook page
Verdict: FALSE
Has Gambia’s President Adama Barrow been elected the chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)?
That is the claim being made by Facebook page – State house link banjul.
With more than 8,000 followers, State house link banjul made the post on December 14, 2021, and has since generated about 700 Facebook interactions including 500 likes and 150 comments.
Fact-check
Ghanaian President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is the current chairman of sub-regional bloc the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
He is serving his second term as chairman of ECOWAS after a consensus from the ECOWAS Member States was reached for him to serve for one more year sometime in February 2021.
As recently as December 12, 2021, Sixtieth Ordinary Session of the Authority of Heads of State and Government of ECOWAS was organized in Abuja under the chairmanship of H. E. Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo – with Gambia’s President Adama Barrow also in attendance.
A final communique after the summit has been issued by ECOWAS and nowhere does it state that President Adama Barrow is the new chairman of ECOWAS as is being suggested.
ECOWAS
The Gambia is a one of the 15 members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
The main goal of the West Africa bloc is to promote economic cooperation among member states to raise living standards and promote economic development.
ECOWAS has also worked to address some security issues in the sub region by deploying a peacekeeping force for conflict resolution at various times in troubled countries.
An extraordinary session of the ECOWAS Council of Ministers on Institutional Reform on 5 October unanimously elected Dr. Omar Touray of The Gambia as President of the ECOWAS Commission for the period 2022-2026. Dr Touray, who served, inter alia, as The Gambia’s Foreign Minister and Permanent Representative to the United Nations, will be the first Gambian to hold the top position at the Commission. He will replace Ivorian Jean-Claude Kassi Brou, who assumed the rotational Presidency in 2018.