Focus on ECOWAS
The Ecowas headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria
Moving towards an Ecowas of people An Ecowas “Vision 2020” programme aims at achieving an “Ecowas of people” by the year 2020. In the meantime, the Ecowas Commission is implementing a regional roadmap
whose goal is to eventually merge the proposed regional currency, the Eco, with the long-established Francophone common currency, the CFA franc, into a single regional medium of exchange. These are busy times at the Ecowas headquarters in Abuja. Ben Asante reports.
T
he Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) is a regional group of 15 countries founded in May 1975 with a mission to promote
economic integration in “all fields of economic activity, particularly industry, transport, telecommunications, energy, agriculture, natural resources, commerce, monetary and financial questions, social and cultural matters...”
It started as an offshoot of the
close economic collaboration between West Africa’s largest market, Nigeria (accounting for half the region’s estimated combined population of 250 million people) and the smaller country of Togo, long considered a busy commercial outpost in the region. Tis soon evolved into an economic
bloc cutting across all Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone countries
in the region. Regional leaders have since transformed the Ecowas Secretariat into a Commission. On the eve of its 36th anniversary, Ecowas leaders at the recent 39th Ordinary Summit held in Abuja, Nigeria, bestowed on the two foremost founding fathers, the late President Gnassingbé Eyadéma of Togo and Nigeria’s former military head of state, General Yakubu Gowon, “Founders’ Honorary Awards”.
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