Abidjan is hosting a pivotal consultative meeting on the future of ECOWAS, which began on Tuesday March 3, 2026,
Balancing frank admissions of economic underperformance with bold reform proposals, West African policymakers are attempting to chart a shared course for the next 50 years.
“Intellectual honesty compels us to acknowledge that our economic integration has yet to unleash its full potential.”
It was with that unflinching assessment that Adama Dosso, Cote d’Ivoire’s Minister of African Integration and Ivorians Abroad, opened the high-level gathering.
The consultative meeting is being held as a precursor to the upcoming ECOWAS Summit on the Future. It brings together diplomats, private sector experts and civil society representatives for four days of intensive deliberations.
The figures presented landed like a wake-up call: in 2024,
intra-ECOWAS trade accounted for just 5.7% of the region’s total trade volume. Despite decades of effort, that share has consistently remained below the 15% threshold.
For Minister Dosso, the root causes are well-known: persistent non-tariff barriers, fragmented markets and an over-reliance on raw commodity exports. These bottlenecks severely limit the bloc’s ability to absorb external shocks and generate employment for an ever-expanding youth population.
In response to this diagnosis, Cote d’Ivoire — ECOWAS’s second-largest economy after Nigeria — is putting forward a pragmatic roadmap structured around five key priorities, with the completion of the common market topping the agenda.
Dosso stressed the urgency of dismantling non-tariff barriers along ten strategic corridors, including the Abidjan–Lagos and Dakar–Bamako axes, through greater digitalization of customs procedures. The second pillar centers on targeted industrialization.
In his view, ECOWAS could build competitive advantage around four high-potential value chains: agro-processing — covering cocoa, cashew and tropical fruits — textiles and apparel, essential pharmaceuticals and renewable energy. To support these ambitions, he proposed the creation of a Community Incentive Framework (CIF) and an annual investor forum.
Mohamed Ibn Chambas, chair of the Task Force on the Trade Liberalization Scheme (TLS), invoked the vision of the founding fathers who, 50 years ago, believed in an African-owned destiny.
He nonetheless sounded the alarm over present-day headwinds: global trade wars, climate shocks and mounting debt burdens.
That assessment was echoed by the private sector, represented by Casimir Migan of FEWACCI, who sees the region’s 400 million consumers as an untapped engine of economic power. “The time has come to turn our legal instruments into tangible drivers of production,” he argued.
As deliberations continue, the core challenge is clear: transforming ECOWAS from an organization of protocols into a genuine engine of inclusive growth. Meeting that challenge will require a reliable statistical compass — including the integration of informal trade flows through the ECOTIS and ECO-ICBT frameworks.
AP/lb/gik/APA