23rd April 2026
The 2026 annual Early Warning System (EWS) Workshop brought 15 West and Central African countries together for the continent’s first regional joint supply planning exercise. Decision makers from the 12 ECOWAS member states, as well as Congo Brazzaville, Mauritania, and São Tomé and Príncipe, reviewed procurement plans, coordinated resource use, and strengthened the availability of reproductive health and family planning supplies across the region.
RHSC partnered with the WAHO and UNFPA to organize the 2026 workshop and facilitate interactive sessions where participants actively used the VAN platform to pull and analyze data for joint decision-making on supply planning across the West African region and three non-ECOWAS countries. (Read more)
The exercise resulted in a joint regional supply plan combining contraceptive needs across participating countries, laying the groundwork for future pooled procurement, and helping identify stock imbalances across the region, and possible solutions.
As governments are being encouraged to increase investment in health systems and commodity procurement, the workshop and regional joint supply plan highlighted the value of the VAN platform as a shared space for data analysis, coordination, and partner collaboration.