RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 COVID-19 in West Africa: regional resource mobilisation and allocation in the first year of the pandemic JF BMJ Global Health JO BMJ Global Health FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd SP e004762 DO 10.1136/bmjgh-2020-004762 VO 6 IS 5 A1 Césaire Ahanhanzo A1 Ermel Ameswue Kpogbe Johnson A1 Ejemai Amaize Eboreime A1 Sombié Issiaka A1 Ben Idrissa Traoré A1 Clétus C Y Adohinzin A1 Tosin Adesina A1 Ely Noel Diallo A1 Nanlop Obgureke A1 Stanley Okolo YR 2021 UL http://gh.bmj.com/content/6/5/e004762.abstract AB The world continues to battle the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Whereas many countries are currently experiencing the second wave of the outbreak; Africa, despite being the last continent to be affected by the virus, has not experienced as much devastation as other continents. For example, West Africa, with a population of 367 million people, had confirmed 412 178 cases of COVID-19 with 5363 deaths as of 14 March 2021; compared with the USA which had recorded almost 30 million cases and 530 000 deaths, despite having a slightly smaller population (328 million). Several postulations have been made in an attempt to explain this phenomenon. One hypothesis is that African countries have leveraged on experiences from past epidemics to build resilience and response strategies which may be contributing to protecting the continent’s health systems from being overwhelmed. This practice paper from the West African Health Organization presents experience and data from the field on how countries in the region mobilised support to address the pandemic in the first year, leveraging on systems, infrastructure, capacities developed and experiences from the 2014 Ebola virus disease outbreak.All data relevant to the study are included in the article.