Business
East African Community studying West African integration model – dumps EU model
Experts negotiating rules for unifying economic policies of the five East African Community countries have turned to West Africa for lessons on integration as the Eurozone crisis undermines confidence in the Western model.
A taskforce is touring West Africa to meet representatives of the Commission of West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA) the whole of this week.
“The task force will discuss and share experiences with practitioners from UEMOA to understand the formation and conduct of the monetary policy in West Africa,” the East African Community secretariat said in a statement.
The 22-member team, the statement says, will visit the National Central Bank of Burkina Faso, the Regional Statistical Center of the Commission, the Central Bank of West African States and Senegal’s finance ministry.
“The team will discuss the roles of the different institutions, co-ordination of fiscal policies and best practices,” says the East African Community Secretariat said last week.
The eight-member UEMOA created in 1994 by countries which already shared the franc as a single currency operates more like a currency union than a monetary one that the East African Community seeks to create.
Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo and Guinea-Bissau are members.
