The Institute serves as a member (from West Africa) on the African Development Bank’s (AfDB) Civil Society Committee.
WACSI is the West African region coordinator for the African Working Group on SDGs. The institute is equally a member of the AWG 13-member Core Facilitating Group for SDGs issues in Africa. In Ghana, WACSI serves as a convener of goal 16 on the Civil Society Platform on SDGs.
The Institute has convened over 120 national and regional dialogues on a range of policy issues including on gender equality, women political and economic empowerment, youth development, elections, peace and security, sustainable development goals (SGDs), domestic resource mobilisation, civil society sustainability, civic space and enabling environment.
WACSI facilitated the establishment of the only regional women’s elections observation team—West Africa Women’s Election Observation Team (WAWEO)—in partnership with Women in Peace and Security Network-Africa (WIPSEN-Africa).
In 2014, the Institute partnered with Akina Mama wa Africa (AMwA) on its African leadership programmes to examine women’s roles, contributions and frustrations within the oil and gas sector in three West African countries, namely Nigeria, Ghana and Liberia.
WACSI has partnered with the Strategic Planning Directorate of ECOWAS to advocate, build civil society’s capacity and share knowledge on the Community Strategic Framework. The Institute has particularly been engaged in enhancing civil society’s role in the implementation of the framework (CSF) through presentation and engagement of CSOs constituents at various forums and meetings.
The Institute served as the International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) hub for CSOs in West Africa promoting RtoP norms through policy dialogues, advocacy, technical training workshop and case studies analysis.
WACSI has furthered its engagement on regional integration issues through its partnership on the Regional Integration Issues Forum (RIIF) and the Centre for Regional in Africa (CRIA)—a platform that brings together multi-sectorial actors to deliberate on and push for regional integration policies and efforts, starting with a pilot in Ghana.
WACSI worked with Humanity United and Nexus Fund to strengthen CSOs capacity in preventing mass atrocities, particularly creating platforms for CSOs to get familiar with different United Nations (UN) conventions, resolutions and high-level global policy decisions that prohibit genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity across UN member countries.
Through its partnership with the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) on the Immunisation Advocacy Initiative (IAI), WACSI contributed towards strengthening the capacity of civil society organisations in advocacy to demand for increased domestic financing for imminusation and universal health coverage in Africa. This initiative was piloted in three countries; Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Kenya.
WACSI is currently providing technical support and strengthening advocacy and networking capacity of CSOs working on ending child marriage across six (6) priority countries in West Africa including Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Mali, Sierra Leone and Guinea, through the support of Ford Foundation.