The Division of Electoral Assistance of ECOWAS will organized from 19-30 August 2024 in Lagos, Nigeria. The participants at the BRIDGE TtT are composed of members of 15 EMBs belonging to the ECONEC Network.

Created in 2008 as the umbrella body of Electoral Management Bodies (EMBs) in West Africa, the ECOWAS Network of Electoral Commissions (ECONEC) has as core mandate to promote the conduct of peaceful, fair and credible elections whose outcomes are accepted by all stakeholders. Its means of action include the conduct of symposia on salient emerging thematic electoral developments of interest to election administrators, capacity-building programs, peer-learning events, research, and advocacy.

Considering that there are no formalized university programs focused on the field of electoral administration and operations, a group of experienced election practitioners and electoral assistance providers from around the world came together to develop a comprehensive training curriculum covering the principles and standards for every aspect of the electoral process. It is this effort that gave rise to the BRIDGE  program, which is now widely acclaimed as the most complete and pertinent training course for equipping electoral administrators with the essential tools for conducting fair, credible, and acceptable public consultations.

Thus, in pursuit of this mandate, ECONEC is planning to leverage the BRIDGE curriculum and methodology to conduct a Train-the-Facilitator (TtF) workshop for EMB staff charged with the responsibility of training. This endeavor finds its rationale in the fact that such a training will, on the one hand, help enhance each EMB’s in-house training capacity while also contributing, on the other hand, to networking and peer-learning among staff of EMBs in the region.