Gambian national Mam Cherno Jallow has officially taken the helm of GIABA, the Inter-Governmental Action Group against Money Laundering in West Africa, at a ceremony held on Monday 31 August in Dakar. Appointed in July by ECOWAS heads of state, he arrives at a strategic moment for the institution, ahead of a new round of mutual evaluations and just as the region's membership has expanded once again.
From the moment he took office, the new director general set out his priorities: strengthening the technical and financial capacity of member states, as well as that of GIABA's own secretariat. Front and centre is the third round of mutual evaluations, carried out under the methodology of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) — an exercise that is decisive for the region's compliance with international standards, and therefore for its exposure to the risk of being placed on the grey list.
The stakes are concrete for West African economies: a downgrade can drive up the cost of correspondent banking relationships, lengthen compliance procedures, and push some international banks to scale back or abandon operations in markets deemed too costly to monitor. For economies heavily dependent on dollar and euro flows, the bill can rise quickly — hence Jallow's determination to strengthen financial institutions' capacity to detect illicit funds.
The new head also inherits an organisation whose membership has just changed: Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, having left ECOWAS, rejoined GIABA in February 2026, after their applications were accepted in December 2025 and their dues settled. The regional framework against money laundering and terrorist financing therefore once again covers all three countries of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) — a configuration that could add a further dimension to his mandate.
At 60, Mam Cherno Jallow knows the inner workings of West African cooperation well. A financial economist with an MBA in banking and finance from CESAG in Dakar, he led the Federation of West African Chambers of Commerce and Industry between 2010 and 2015, before holding several roles in cooperation and strategic planning at the ECOWAS Commission. He also knows GIABA from the inside, having joined in January 2022 as head of strategic planning and resource mobilisation, before serving as acting director of administration and finance since January 2024. He succeeds Liberia's Edwin W. Harris Jr., who had led the institution since August 2022.
Source: Afrimag (September 2026). Our teams track developments in the compliance and anti-money-laundering framework across the ECOWAS zone, a factor that directly affects the region's access to international financial markets.