West African leaders are preparing for a crucial summit on Sunday in the Nigerian capital Abuja, where they will focus on the morale-sapping departure of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger from their 15-member bloc Ecowas.
Few think the military rulers of the three dissident states can be convinced to pause or reverse their decision.
While facing this blow to regional unity, West Africa is also about to begin work on a 1,028km highway from Ivory Coast’s capital Abidjan, via Ghana, Togo and Benin, to Nigeria’s largest city ,Lagos.
Construction is due to start in 2026 and commitments of $15.6bn (£12.3bn) have already been mobilized from a range of financiers and investors.
Just as Western Europe linked the Soviet-led communist bloc to a ‘common market’ that later evolved into today’s trading power, the European Union (EU), Ecowas may conclude that a pursuit of prosperity and growth appears to be the most effective answer. to the wave of military coups and nationalism that has swept through the region since 2020.
The plan to build a modern transport corridor along the West African coast was originally approved eight years ago – long before the coups that toppled civilian regimes in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
Preparatory studies led by the African Development Bank were commissioned.
But when these were presented last month, the moment could hardly have come at a better time to revive the battered self-confidence of ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States).
Neither traditional diplomacy, nor sanctions, nor even the threat of military intervention in Niger had succeeded in persuading the juntas to organize elections and restore civilian rule, as required by ECOWAS’s governing rules.
The rebel regimes declared that they would abandon the fifteen-member bloc altogether.
They have subsequently rebuffed the remaining members’ attempts to persuade them to stay, although the ECOWAS envoy, Senegal’s new young president Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who shares their nationalist views, is still trying.
Until this crisis, ECOWAS was Africa’s most cohesive and politically integrated regional grouping, with a creditable record of crisis management and even deploying peacekeepers to restive member states.
With the departure of Mali, Burkina and Niger, the bloc will lose 76 million of its 446 million inhabitants and more than half of its total geographical land area, with the loss of large parts of the Sahara – a painful blow to prestige and self-confidence.
Supporters of the three states withdrawing from ECOWAS have compared it to Brexit, Britain’s withdrawal from the EU in 2020 [AFP]
The shock of the three countries’ withdrawal could give impetus to those pushing for stricter rules on governance and democracy.
Meanwhile, the ambitious Coastal Transport Corridor project, intended to support economic development, will also serve a political purpose: to demonstrate the capacity of the remaining Member States to work together and accelerate the trade growth and investment attractiveness of Western coastal urban areas -Africa, which are already the most prosperous. part of this vast region.
And just as the wealth and dynamism of the EU have proven a powerful attraction to former communist states, rising prosperity in ECOWAS may eventually tempt now disenchanted northern states to rejoin the bloc.
Construction of the proposed four- to six-lane highway is expected to create 70,000 jobs, with an ambitious target for completion by 2030.
And the plan is to acquire a wide enough strip of land along the route to later accommodate a new railway line, connecting the major port cities along the Gulf of Guinea. The existing railway lines extend inland, but there is no railway line along the coast.
The road will connect many of West Africa’s largest cities: Abidjan, with 8.3 million inhabitants, Accra (4 million), Lomé (2 million), Cotonou (2.6 million) and Lagos, estimated to be almost 20 million or maybe even more.
Several cities are important gateways for the flow of trade in and out of the region.
The bureaucratic hassles and risks of petty corruption that have so often complicated the lives of drivers traveling from one country to another are already starting to diminish.
At many border crossings, modern border posts, where officials from both countries work side by side to check passports and transit documents, have replaced the several huts where drivers and passengers queued at a succession of counters while a group of Border Police and Customs officials after another we laboriously made our way through the formalities.
And now the proposed highway and rail line promise to further accelerate the flow of trade and travel between coastal economies, boost competitiveness and integration, and transform the region’s attractiveness for investors – just as the EU boosts trade and development across the country European continent has transformed.
And that process of economic and administrative integration obviously had enormous political consequences.
It acted as a powerful incentive for countries still outside the bloc to improve economic governance, strengthen democracy and tackle corruption in the hope of qualifying for membership.
Perhaps ECOWAS can emulate this precedent and entice the dissident states to rejoin, especially if flagship projects like the transport corridor provide a real boost to growth.
Because not only do Mali, Niger and Burkina face serious development and security challenges, but they are all landlocked and highly dependent on their coastal neighbors, through transport, trade and labor migration.
[BBC]
Huge volumes of trade, formal and informal, flow across borders.
Livestock from the three countries in the Sahel are exported on the farm to feed city dwellers in Dakar, Abidjan and Lagos.
Onions and potatoes grown in Niger’s dry climate are prized by coastal consumers, while Ivorian, Ghanaian and Nigerian goods are exported in the opposite direction.
Millions of Burkinabès and Malians are settled in Ivory Coast, a mainstay of the workforce for cocoa plantations.
Moreover, the coup leaders are not withdrawing from the West African CFA franc, a common currency of eight countries, backed by France, which hampers competitiveness but provides a solid defense against inflation and monetary instability.
Yet these deep ties between the Sahel countries and the coastal areas of West Africa were not enough to prevent the military regimes in Mali, Burkina and Niger from announcing their withdrawal from ECOWAS.
Hostility towards the bloc, which they portray as bullying and arrogant, has paid political dividends and increased their popularity at home. And Morocco is talking about opening an alternative trade corridor to its Atlantic ports, which could broaden the possibilities.
But if the remaining ECOWAS countries can accelerate their own drive for prosperity, reduce trade barriers and press ahead with pioneering projects such as the coastal highway and the railway, they can gradually ease the current political problems and mistrust and strengthen the Sahelian states are moving back into the country. a reunited West African regional identity.
Paul Melly is a consulting fellow at the Africa Program at Chatham House in London.
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