Business
West Africa falling behind other regions in economic integration
Ghana’s Vice President John Dramani Mahama has urged leaders of the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS) sub-region to demonstrate more commitment towards the integration effort in order to make the region globally competitive
Mahama wants the region’s leaders to seriously consider the opportunities that large markets offer, especially as trade progress in the region has been the slowest, estimated to amount to just about 10 percent of total volume.
He said other sub-regions were making much better progress than West Africa – the Southern African Development Community (SADC), East African Community (EAC) and Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) were working on the Cape to Cairo project and achieving much faster liberalization than the ECOWAS region.
Mahama noted that the integration process had lingered for more than 30 years, saying leaders of the region understood the justification to not only establish a free trade zone in the West Africa but to push further an agenda for political integration of the region.
Although the ECOWAS protocol allows 90 days visa free movement of people between countries in the sub-region, he said, unfortunately when you arrive at the borders of a fellow West African state, immigration officers still maintained the discretion to decide how long one could stay in a particular country.