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The Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS (French: Communauté économique des États de l'Afrique de l'Ouest, CEDEAO; Portuguese: Comunidade Económica dos Estados da África Ocidental CEEAO) is a regional group of fifteen West African countries. Founded on 28 May 1975, with the signing of the Treaty of Lagos, its mission is to promote economic integration across the region.

Considered one of the pillar regional blocs of the continent-wide African Economic Community, ECOWAS was established to achieve "collective self-sufficiency" for its member states by creating a single large trading bloc through forming an economic and trading union. The organization operates in three co-official languages—French, English, and Portuguese.

It also serves as a peacekeeping force in the region, with member states occasionally sending military units to itervene at times of instability in member countries, like in Ivory Coast in 2003, Liberia in 2003, Guinea-Bissau in 2012, Mali in 2013, and Gambia in 2017.[1][2]

The ECOWAS consists of two institutions to implement policies—the ECOWAS Commission and the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development, formerly known as the Fund for Cooperation until it was renamed in 2001.

A few members of the organization have come and gone over the years. In 1976 Cape Verde joined ECOWAS, and in December 2000 Mauritania withdrew, having announced its intention to do so in December 1999.

History

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Geography

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Member states

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As of 2017 ECOWAS has 15 member states, eight of these are French-speaking, five are English-speaking and two Portuguese-speaking. All current members joined the community as founding members in May 1975, except Cape Verde which joined in 1977.[3] The only former member of ECOWAS is Arabic-speaking Mauritania, which was also one of the founding members in 1975 and decided to withdraw in December 2000.[3]

Statistics for population, nominal GDP and purchase price parity GDP listed below are taken from World Bank estimates for 2015, published in December 2016.[4][5][6] Area data is taken from a 2012 report compiled by the United Nations Statistics Division.[7]

Country Area[7]
(km2) 		Population[4]
(thousands) 		GDP (nominal)[5]
(millions USD) 		GDP (PPP)[6]
(millions intl.$) 		Currency Official
language
 Benin 114,763 10,880 8,291 22,377 CFA franc French
 Burkina Faso 272,967 18,106 10,678 30,708 CFA franc French
 Cape Verde 4,033 521 1,603 3,413 escudo Portuguese
 Gambia 11,295 1,991 939 3,344 dalasi English
 Ghana 238,533 27,410 37,543 115,409 cedi English
 Guinea 245,857 12,609 6,699 15,244 franc French
 Guinea-Bissau 36,125 1,844 1,057 2,685 CFA franc Portuguese
 Ivory Coast 322,463 22,702 31,759 79,766 CFA franc French
 Liberia 111,369 4,503 2,053 3,762 dollar English
 Mali 1,240,192 17,600 12,747 35,695 CFA franc French
 Niger 1,267,000 19,899 7,143 19,013 CFA franc French
 Nigeria 923,768 182,202 481,066 1,093,921 naira English
 Senegal 196,712 15,129 13,610 36,625 CFA franc French
 Sierra Leone 72,300 6,453 4,215 10,127 leone English
 Togo 56,785 7,305 4,088 10,667 CFA franc French
ECOWAS Total 5,114,162 349,154 623,491 1,482,756 — —

Politics

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Regional security co-operation

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See also: Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group

The ECOWAS nations assigned a non-aggression protocol in 1990 along with two earlier agreements in 1978 and 1981. They also signed a Protocol on Mutual Defence Assistance in Freetown, Sierra Leone, on 29 May 1981, that provided for the establishment of an Allied Armed Force of the Community.[8]

Expanded ECOWAS Commission

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For the third time since its inception in 1975, ECOWAS is undergoing institutional reforms. The first was when it revised its treaty on 24 July 1993; the second was in 2007 when the Secretariat was transformed into a Commission. As of July 2013, ECOWAS now has six new departments (Human Resources Management; Education, Science and Culture; Energy and Mines; Telecommunications and IT; Industry and Private Sector Promotion. Finance and Administration to Sierra Leone has been decoupled, to give the incoming Ghana Commissioner the new portfolio of Administration and Conferences)[9]

Community Court of Justice

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The ECOWAS Community Court of Justice was created by a protocol signed in 1991 and was later included in Article 6 of the Revised Treaty of the Community in 1993.[10] However, the Court did not officially begin operations until the 1991 protocol came into effect on 5 November 1996. The jurisdiction of the court is outlined in Article 9 and Articles 76 of the Revised Treaty and allows rulings on disputes between states over interpretations of the Revised Treaty. It also provides the ECOWAS Council with advisory opinions on legal issues (Article 10). Like its companion courts the European Court of Human Rights and East African Court of Justice, it has jurisdiction to rule on fundamental human rights breaches.[10]

Sporting and cultural exchange

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ECOWAS nations organize a broad array of cultural and sports event under the auspices of the body, including the CEDEAO Cup in football, the 2012 ECOWAS Games and the Miss CEDEAO beauty pageant.[11]

Foreign relations

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NSA surveillance

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Further information: Global surveillance disclosure

Documents leaked by Edward Snowden showed in December 2013 that British and American intelligence agencies surveillance targets with America's National Security Agency (NSA) included organizations such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the United Nations Development Programme, the UN's children's charity UNICEF and Médecins Sans Frontières.[12]

Economic integration

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West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA)

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See also: CFA franc and Economic and monetary union
  UEMOA countries
  WAMZ countries
  ECOWAS member only (Cape Verde)

The West African Economic and Monetary Union (also known as UEMOA from its name in French, Union économique et monétaire ouest-africaine) is an organization of eight, mainly francophone West African states within the ECOWAS, that was dominated otherwise by anglophone heavyweights like Nigeria and Ghana.[13] It was established to promote economic integration among countries that share the CFA franc as a common currency. UEMOA was created by a Treaty signed at Dakar, Senegal, on 10 January 1994, by the heads of state and governments of Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Togo. On 2 May 1997, Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony, became the organization's eighth (and only non-Francophone) member state.

UEMOA is a customs union and currency union between the members of ECOWAS. Its objectives include the following:[14]

  • Greater economic competitiveness, through open markets, in addition to the rationalisation and harmonisation of the legal environment
  • The convergence of macro-economic policies and indicators
  • The creation of a common market
  • The co-ordination of sectoral policies
  • The harmonisation of fiscal policies

Among its achievements, the UEMOA has successfully implemented macro-economic convergence criteria and an effective surveillance mechanism. It has adopted a customs union and common external tariff and has combined indirect taxation regulations, in addition to initiating regional structural and sectoral policies. A September 2002 IMF survey cited the UEMOA as "the furthest along the path toward integration" of all the regional groupings in Africa.[15]

ECOWAS and UEMOA have developed a common plan of action on trade liberalisation and macroeconomic policy convergence. The organizations have also agreed on common rules of origin to enhance trade, and ECOWAS has agreed to adopt UEMOA's customs declaration forms and compensation mechanisms.[16]

Membership

West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ)

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See also: Eco (currency)

Formed in 2000, the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ) is a group of six countries within ECOWAS that plan to introduce a common currency called the Eco.[17] The six member states of WAMZ are Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Nigeria and Sierra Leone who founded the organization together in 2000 and Liberia who joined on 16 February 2010. Apart from Guinea, which is Francophone, they are all English speaking countries. Along with Mauritania, Guinea opted out of the CFA franc currency shared by all other former French colonies in West and Central Africa.

The WAMZ attempts to establish a strong stable currency to rival the CFA franc, whose exchange rate is tied to that of the Euro and is guaranteed by the French Treasury. The eventual goal is for the CFA franc and Eco to merge, giving all of West and Central Africa a single, stable currency. The launch of the new currency is being developed by the West African Monetary Institute based in Accra, Ghana.

Membership

Infrastructure

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Main article: ECOWAS rail

A Trans-ECOWAS project, established in 2007, plans to upgrade railways in this zone.[20]

Demographics

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ Adeyemi, Segun (6 August 2003). "West African Leaders Agree on Deployment to Liberia". Jane's Defence Weekly. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  2. ^ "The 5 previous West African military interventions". Yahoo News. AFP. 20 January 2017. Retrieved 27 January 2017.
  3. ^ a b Pazzanita, Anthony (2008). Historical Dictionary of Mauritania. Scarecrow Press. pp. 177–178. ISBN 978-0-8108-6265-4.
  4. ^ a b "Population 2015" (PDF). World Bank. 16 December 2016. Retrieved 27 January 2017.
  5. ^ a b "Gross domestic product 2015" (PDF). World Bank. 16 December 2016. Retrieved 27 January 2017.
  6. ^ a b "Gross domestic product 2015, PPP" (PDF). World Bank. 16 December 2016. Retrieved 27 January 2017.
  7. ^ a b "Demographic Yearbook – Population by sex, annual rate of population increase, surface area and density" (PDF). United Nations Statistics Division. 2012. pp. 1–2. Retrieved 27 January 2017.
  8. ^ "Profile: Economic Community of West African States" (PDF). Africa Union. 18 November 2010. Retrieved 10 December 2010.
  9. ^ Bensah, Emmanuel K. (24 July 2013). "Communicating the ECOWAS Message (4): A New Roadmap for the Ouedraogo Commission(1)". Modernghana.com. Retrieved 8 August 2014.
  10. ^ a b ECOWAS (2007) Information Manual: The Institutions of the Community ECOWAS
  11. ^ "Miss ECOWAS 2010". The Economist. 18 November 2010. Retrieved 10 December 2010.
  12. ^ GCHQ and NSA targeted charities, Germans, Israeli PM and EU chief The Guardian 20 December 2013
  13. ^ Fau-Nougaret (ed.), Matthieu (2012). "La concurrence des organisations régionales en Afrique". Paris: L'Harmattan. {{cite news}}: |last= has generic name (help)
  14. ^ [1] REGIONAL INTEGRATION AND COOPERATION IN WEST AFRICA A Multidimensional Perspective, Chapter 1. Introduction: Reflections on an Agenda for Regional Integration and Cooperation in West Africa
  15. ^ "Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)" fact sheet from the US Department of State's Bureau of African Affairs
  16. ^ "Annual Report on Integration in Africa 2002" All Africa, 1 March 2002
  17. ^ "Common West Africa currency: ECO in 2015". MC Modern Ghana.
  18. ^ "The Supplementary Wamz Payment System Development Project the Gambia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia". Africa Development Bank Group. 2011. Retrieved 7 May 2011.
  19. ^ "WAMZ gets US$7.8 million grant". Accra Daily Mail. 2011. Retrieved 7 May 2011.
  20. ^ Proposed Ecowas railway. railwaysafrica.com.
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