ECOWAS

This acronym puzzled me for months (Echoas, Echoise, Eckowass, I tried them all). Today's a day to say "Aha!". From Wikipedia:

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is a regional group of fifteen West African countries, founded on May 28, 1975, with the signing of the Treaty of Lagos. Its mission is to promote economic integration. In 1976 Cape Verde joined ECOWAS, and in December 2000 Mauritania withdrew, having announced its intention to do so in December 1999.

It was founded to achieve "collective self-sufficiency" for the member states by means of economic and monetary union creating a single large trading bloc. The very slow progress towards this aim meant that the treaty was revised in Cotonou on July 24, 1993, towards a looser collaboration. The ECOWAS Secretariat and the Fund for Cooperation, Compensation and Development are its two main institutions to implement policies. The ECOWAS Fund was transformed into the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development in 2001. ECOWAS is one of the pillars of the African Economic Community (AEC).
The current President of the Commission is James Victor Gbeho. The current chairman is acting President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria.
It operates officially in three coequal languages (English, French, and Portuguese).

Official Website.

Tama's Snimbe

I must thank Putumayo for all the African music it helps me discover. My latest disvovery is Tama's Snimbe, a colloborative effort with one of my favourite artists, Susheela Raman.

Tama's Biography from Yahoo Music: Named after a Bambara word meaning "to walk," Tama consists of Malian vocalist Tom Diakite, percussionist Djanuno Dabo of Guinea Bissau and London-based producer/multi-instrumentalist Sam Mills. The trio met when they were playing with the hypnotic Bengali performer Paban Das Baul, with whom Mills had collaborated previously on albums like Real Sugar. Having some extra time at the recording studio led to the group creating impromptu songs that incorporated Diakite's West African musical heritage and Mills' roots in pop, avant-garde and world music, which stretch back to his days in 23 Skidoo in the late '70s and early '80s. The group's debut album Nostalgie was released in 1999 on the RealWorld label. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide.

Snimbe feature's in Tama's album Espace.