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Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)

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Towards Pan-Africanism

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Abstract

This chapter examines ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States, established long (or, more precisely, six years before) the OAU began a gradual ideological move from advocating for political liberation to economic (and wholesome) liberation for Africa. ECOWAS was fronted by Nigeria and Ghana, two island Anglophone nations in an ocean dominated by former French colonies. The latter already had a tradition of cooperation, albeit under the French-designed French West Africa (Afrique-Occidentale française, AOF), formed in 1895. The chapter reflects on the challenges experienced by ECOWAS throughout its existence, especially strong national leaders and parochial differences (Anglophone vs. Francophone orientations) including a tiff over the common currency, Eco, as well as membership to two monetary unions: West Africa Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), comprising of Francophone countries that use the West African CFA franc and the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ) for Anglophone countries, and the challenges of forming the unified, single currency monetary union. It discusses the bloc’s ‘monitoring group’ (which served as the military arm of ECOWAS), the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) and its several deployments in countries such as Liberia and Sierra Leone. ECOWAS’s pre-REC data on the three variables was inconclusive since it only covers 5 years of non-REC period. However, qualitative case studies, e.g., ECOMOG’s near-deployment in Gambia’s 2016 ‘contested’ election, show that collective regional actions can induce individuals, leaders and nations to change course. However, the actions of France in Mali and Ivory Coast demonstrate that despite ECOWAS’ capacities, achieving regional peace and security can be a daunting task.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Michelle Pitts, “Sub-Regional Solutions for African Conflict: The ECOMOG Experiment,” Journal of Conflict Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1 (1999). https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/JCS/article/view/4379.

  2. 2.

    Roger Gocking, The History of Ghana (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005).

  3. 3.

    Gocking, The History of Ghana (2005).

  4. 4.

    Gocking, The History of Ghana (2005), 56.

  5. 5.

    pp. William H. Worger, Nancy L. Clark and Edward A. Alpers, Africa and the West: A Documentary History: Volume 2: From Colonialism to Independence, 1875 to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 48.

  6. 6.

    Michael Crowder, “The First World War and its Consequences in Africa,” The UNESCO Courier: Many Voices, One World, May 2021, https://en.unesco.org/courier/news-views-online/first-world-war-and-its-consequences-africa.

  7. 7.

    Benita van Eyssen, “World War I: The ‘Black Army’ that marched in from Africa,” Deutsche Welle, November 10, 2018, Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/380wk.

  8. 8.

    Melvin E. Page, “Introduction: Black Men in a White Man’s War,” In Melvin E Page and Andy McKinlay, Eds., Africa and the First World War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1987).

  9. 9.

    Van Eyssen, “World War I” (2018).

  10. 10.

    Killingray and Plaut, Fighting for Britain: African Soldiers (2010).

  11. 11.

    David Killingray with Martin Plaut, Fighting for Britain: African Soldiers in the Second World War (Suffolk: James Currey, 2010), 8.

  12. 12.

    Ashley Jackson, The British Empire and the Second World War (New York: Hambledon Continuum, 2006), 220.

  13. 13.

    Chima J. Korieh, Nigeria and World War II: Colonialism, Empire, and Global Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 117.

  14. 14.

    Jackson, The British Empire (2006).

  15. 15.

    U.S. Department of Commerce, New Kennedy Round Cuts, International Commerce, Volume 74, September 16, 1968 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1968).

  16. 16.

    Arthur Girault, Charles Gide and Carnegie Endowment, The Colonial Tariff Policy of France (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1916), 43.

  17. 17.

    Girault, et al., The Colonial Tariff Policy (1916), 43.

  18. 18.

    Raymond F. Betts, Assimilation and Association in French Colonial Theory, 1890–1914 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 106.

  19. 19.

    Betts, Assimilation and Association (2005), 106.

  20. 20.

    Saliha Belmessous, Assimilation and Empire: Uniformity in French and British Colonies, 1541–1954 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 57.

  21. 21.

    Harry Gamble, Contesting French West Africa: Battles Over Schools and the Colonial Order, 1900–1950 (University of Nebraska Press, 2017), 137.

  22. 22.

    Ruth Ginio, French Colonialism Unmasked: The Vichy Years in French West Africa (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), 153.

  23. 23.

    Malachi McIntosh, Emigration and Caribbean Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), n.p.

  24. 24.

    Kristen Stromberg Childers, Seeking Imperialism’s Embrace: National Identity, Decolonization, and Assimilation in the French Caribbean (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 61.

  25. 25.

    Childers, Seeking Imperialism’s Embrace (2016), 61.

  26. 26.

    McIntosh, Emigration and Caribbean Literature (2015), n.p.

  27. 27.

    Tyler Stovall, Transnational France: The Modern History of a Universal Nation (New York: Routledge, 2018), 227.

  28. 28.

    Stovall, Transnational France (2018), 227.

  29. 29.

    Stovall, Transnational France (2018), 227.

  30. 30.

    Stovall, Transnational France (2018), 221.

  31. 31.

    Kwame Opoku, “Traditional Law Under French Colonial Rule,” Verfassung und Recht in Übersee/Law and Politics in Africa, Asia and Latin America, Vol. 7, No. 2 (1974): 139 https://www.jstor.org/stable/43108378.

  32. 32.

    Opoku, “Traditional Law Under French Colonial Rule” (1974), 135.

  33. 33.

    Opoku, “Traditional Law Under French Colonial Rule” (1974), 135.

  34. 34.

    Nicolas Bancel and Pascal Blanchard, “To Civilize: The Invention of the Native (1918–1940),” In Pascal Blanchard, Sandrine Lemaire, Nicolas Bancel and Dominic Thomas, Eds., Colonial Culture in France since the Revolution (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014), 175–176.

  35. 35.

    Derek Birrell, Direct Rule and the Governance of Northern Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), 1.

  36. 36.

    Matthew Lange, Lineages of Despotism and Development: British Colonialism and State Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 22.

  37. 37.

    Lange, Lineages of Despotism (2009), 24.

  38. 38.

    Lange, Lineages of Despotism (2009), 24.

  39. 39.

    Lange, Lineages of Despotism (2009), 24.

  40. 40.

    David M. Anderson, Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2005), 10.

  41. 41.

    Anderson, Histories of the Hanged (2005), 10.

  42. 42.

    Mahmood Mamdani, Define and Rule: Native as political Identity (The W. E. B. Du Bois Lectures Book 12), (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012), 70.

  43. 43.

    Mamdani, Define and Rule (2012), 70.

  44. 44.

    John Harris, The Indian Mutiny (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 2001), 56.

  45. 45.

    McIntosh, Emigration and Caribbean Literature (2015), n.p.

  46. 46.

    A discussion on the path towards the formation of the OAU and the role of residual regional grou**s is discussed elsewhere – see chapter 1 of Stephen M. Magu, Explaining Post-colonial Foreign Policy in Africa (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).

  47. 47.

    Lynn K. Mytelka, “A Genealogy of Francophone West and Equatorial African Regional Organisations,” The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2 (1974): 300. http://www.jstor.org/stable/159725.

  48. 48.

    Bach, Daniel C. “The Politics of West African Economic Co-Operation: C.E.A.O. and E.C.O.W.A.S.” The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 21, No. 4 (1983): 605. http://www.jstor.org/stable/160583.

  49. 49.

    Yansané, Aguibou Y. “West African Economic Integration: Is ECOWAS the Answer?” Africa Today, Vol. 24, No. 3 (1977): 49. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4185706.

  50. 50.

    Mytelka, “A Genealogy of Francophone West and Equatorial African” (1974): 300.

  51. 51.

    Daniel C. Bach, Regionalism in Africa: Genealogies, Institutions and Trans-State Networks (New York: Routledge, 2016).

  52. 52.

    Bach, Regionalism in Africa (2016).

  53. 53.

    Charles Dokubo, “Regional Integration and National Security: A Nigerian Perspective,” In Yomi Akinyeye, Ed., Nation-states and the Challenges of Regional Integration in West Africa: The Case of Nigeria (Paris: Karthala, 2010), 106–107.

  54. 54.

    ECOWAS, “About ECOWAS: Governance Structure,” Economic Community of West African States, May 2021. https://www.ecowas.int/about-ecowas/governance-structure/.

  55. 55.

    European Council on Foreign Relations, “Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)/Communauté Economique des Etats de L’afrique De L’ouest (CEDEAO),” ECFR—Map** Regional Cooperation. May 2021, https://ecfr.eu/special/african-cooperation/ECOWAS/.

  56. 56.

    European Council on Foreign Relations, “Economic Community of West African States” (May 2021).

  57. 57.

    ECOWAS, “About ECOWAS,” May 2021.

  58. 58.

    Felix I. Ikuomola, The Ebola Virus and West Africa: Medical and Sociocultural Aspects (Bloomington: iUniverse, 2015), n.p.

  59. 59.

    Adekeye Adebajo, Liberia’s Civil War: Nigeria, ECOMOG, and Regional Security in West Africa (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002), 64.

  60. 60.

    Chukwuma C. C. Osakwe and Bulus Nom Audu, “The Nigeria Led ECOMOG Military Intervention and Interest in the Sierra Leone Crisis: An Overview,” Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, Vol. 8 No. 4 S1 (July 2017): 107–115. https://doi.org/10.2478/mjss-2018-0079.

  61. 61.

    ADB, OECD and UNDP, African Economic Outlook 2017 Entrepreneurship and Industrialisation (Paris: OECD, 2017), 88.

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  1. Department of Political Science, Norfolk State University, Norfolk, VA, USA

    Stephen M. Magu

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Magu, S.M. (2023). Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). In: Towards Pan-Africanism. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8944-5_8

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