The Humanitarian Futures Programme is working in collaboration with the ECOWAS Commission in order to assess and enhance the latter’s long-term planning capacity during its restructuring and expansion. The project is intended to relate ECOWAS’ emerging commitment to disaster risk reduction (DRR) within the context of its conflict prevention mandate. Having separately evaluated the drivers of future conflict and humanitarian crises in the sub-region, the aim of this report is to present some preliminary findings as to the institutional challenges that ECOWAS as an intergovernmental organisation (IGO) will face in addressing them. Research was conducted in Abuja as well as Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal and Sierra Leone and consisted primarily of confidential, structured interviews with several dozen subjects with deep experience of ECOWAS, including officials of the Commission and specialised agencies, civil society activists, scientists and academics, diplomats and representatives of member state governments, including disaster management organisations.