Medical Research Archives |https://esmed.org/MRA/index.php/mra/article/view/3817 1 OPEN ACCESS Published: May 31, 2023 Citation: Sombie I, Johnson E, et al,. 2023. Building knowledge broker capacities during the regional research project: lessons learnt from the West African Health Organisation, Medical Research Archives, [online] 11(5). https://doi.org/10.18103/mra. v11i5.3817 Copyright: © 2023 European Society of Medicine. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. DOI https://doi.org/10.18103/mra. v11i5.3817 ISSN: 2375-1924 RESEARCH ARTICLE Building knowledge broker capacities during the regional research project: lessons learnt from the West African Health Organisation *Sombie Issiaka, Johnson Ermel, Lokossou Kuassi Virgil, Amadou Moukaila, Aissi Melchior AJC *isombie@wahooas.org SUMMARY The aim of the article was to understand how its project entitled "moving maternal, newborn and child evidence into policy in West Africa" funded under the Canadian initiative has helped the West African Health Organisation to better build its role as a knowledge broker in West Africa. A case study approach was adopted to allow for the validation or otherwise of stated hypotheses using context, actor, process, and outcome data. WAHO as a HPRO has been able through the Moving Maternal Newborn and Child Health Evidence into policy in West Africa project to play the role of KB through strengthening collaboration between policy makers and researchers, generating knowledge for a better understanding of the evidence use environment in the field of maternal and child health, and finally through the implementation of actions to create an enabling environment for the use of evidence to influence health policy and practice. Weaknesses were noted and mostly corrected in the implementation process. The commitment of senior management and other stakeholders, the implementation of the project using the strengths of the institution, the collaboration with regional experts, the provision of additional human resources and the use of evidence in planning project activities facilitate this capacity building. The experience gained enabled the organisation during the COVID- 19 pandemic to continue to facilitate the use of evidence for decision making by policy makers in West Africa. Keywords: capacity building, knowledge broker, evidence use, West Africa