The Economic Community of West African States was founded in 1975 and has a current membership of 15 countries:
While the organization has well developed goals and has achieved some notable successes, it has some fundamental challenges, even after 30 plus years of existence.
The first is that it is made up of Francophone (French leaning) and Anglophone (British leaning) countries, based on the history of colonization. This difference is most easily recognized in the proposed, and yet undelivered, monetary unions.
The West African Economic and Monetary Union, founded in 1994, was 100% Francophone until Guinea-Bissau (A former Portuguese colony) joined in 1997. It is also known as UEMOA from its name in French (Union économique et monétaire ouest-africaine) Its common currency known as the CFA Franc, whose exchange rate is tied to the Euro and guaranteed by the French Treasury. Its current members are:
Although the ultimate goal is to combine the two currencies, it is clear that immediate policies are strongly influenced by language and colonial history of the member states.
 The Republic of BENIN BURKINA FASO The Republic of CABO VERDE The Republic of COTE D'IVOIRE The Republic of GAMBIA The Republic of GHANA The Republic of GUINEE The Republic of GUINEE BISSAU |  The Republic of LIBERIA The Republic of MALI The Republic of NIGER The Federal Republic of NIGERIA The Republic of SENEGAL The Republic of SIERRA LEONE TOGOLESE Republic |
While the organization has well developed goals and has achieved some notable successes, it has some fundamental challenges, even after 30 plus years of existence.
The first is that it is made up of Francophone (French leaning) and Anglophone (British leaning) countries, based on the history of colonization. This difference is most easily recognized in the proposed, and yet undelivered, monetary unions.
The West African Economic and Monetary Union, founded in 1994, was 100% Francophone until Guinea-Bissau (A former Portuguese colony) joined in 1997. It is also known as UEMOA from its name in French (Union économique et monétaire ouest-africaine) Its common currency known as the CFA Franc, whose exchange rate is tied to the Euro and guaranteed by the French Treasury. Its current members are:
Benin (Founding Member)
Burkina Faso (Founding Member)
Ivory Coast (Founding Member)
Guinea-Bissau (Joined on 2 May 1997)
Mali (Founding Member)
Niger (Founding Member)
Senegal (Founding Member)
Togo (Founding Member)
On the other hand, the West African Monetary Zone is made up of Anglophone countries, with the exception of Guinea, which is Francophone. It is working toward a common currency, known as the ECO, by 2015. Its members are:
Although the ultimate goal is to combine the two currencies, it is clear that immediate policies are strongly influenced by language and colonial history of the member states.
Another difficulty for the group is that state borders were established by the colonial powers with little or no regard for tribal and cultural considerations, not to mention local language. This presents an on-going challenge to security in the region, although there have been significant improvements in this regard over the past 15 years.
The other major challenge for the region is that Nigeria is the largest player by far in the group (almost 70% of the total group GNP) and fears of domination by Nigeria affect decision making.
Then there are the economic and trade realities that impact the potential for intra-regional growth. All members states primarily export natural resources and not manufactured goods. Thus the potential for intra-regional trade is limited until such time as manufacturing capacity is built within the region.
The tendency of developed countries to maintain this disparity so as to favor their own exports serves only to delay the building of manufacturing in ECOWAS. As I mentioned in an earlier post, China is creating manufacturing capability in Africa for competitive as well as strategic purposes. US and EU policy could benefit in the long term from a similar approach.
However, the biggest obstacle to growth for ECOWAS and other Africa regional economic groups is infrastructure. While addressing the opening of the Regional Ministerial Meeting on the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA), in Yamoussoukro, Cote d’Ivoire, on Friday, 9th November 2012, Vice-President of the ECOWAS Commission, Dr. Toga Gayewea McIntosh said that, given the role infrastructure can play in the effective transformation of the region’s vast natural resources into value resources: “to do nothing or little, about infrastructural development within our sub-region is equivalent to self-strangulation.”
In 1970, the world’s rich countries agreed to give 0.7% of their GNI (Gross National Income) as official international development aid, annually. Since then, all rich nations have constantly failed to reach their agreed obligations of the 0.7% target. Instead of 0.7%, the amount of aid has been around 0.2 to 0.4%, some $150 billion short each year.The US, while being the largest contributor in dollar terms, is consistently the lowest in terms of meeting the 0.7% target. (For more detail see: http://www.globalissues.org/article/35/foreign-aid-development-assistance).
Given the needs in Africa and the potential for rapid trade growth, one would hope that the US will find a way to push some of its billions in foreign aid toward developing the infrastructures that will help Africa become the global trade partner that it deserves to be.
Sources:
ECOWAS web site; Economic Paper by:Dr. Donatus Chukwuemeka Ojide (July 2010); UN Statistics
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