lessons drawn from good as well as bad practices. In the same way, there is not yet any true operational framework of exchange among the actors involved in the management of elections in the countries of the sub-region, which makes possibilities for learning from one another difficult. Concerning the different challenges mentioned above, the ECOWAS provides legal as well as institutional means to help taking them up. Beyond the mandates determined by the regional legal framework for it, the ECOWAS has put in place an electoral unit whose objectives are in the same line with most of the challenges that member countries encounter in the management of elections. The Electoral Unit of the community aims, indeed, at reinforcing the capacity of member states in the electoral administration, at developing a code of conduct for elections for the ECOWAS region, at contributing to the improvement of the quality of observation missions, and at helping electoral commissions of the sub-region to rationalize the costs of elections. The available provisions at the level of the ECOWAS, even if they can and deserve to be improved, offer a series of opportunities to member states in the search solutions to problems that they encounter in the management of elections. In the remainder of this chapter, the forms of support that the ECOWAS can send to its member countries within the framework of the management of elections is presented in two categories: the actions of reinforcement of capacities(1), and so­called prospect actions and the proposition of solutions(2). 5.1 Actions of reinforcement of capacities The first category of support that ECOWAS can send to its member states in the framework of the management of elections includes actions for capacity-building. These are actions which are likely to complement those planned(and implemented) at the national level to improve the capacity of member states(and of their electoral commissions) to bring 226