The Economic Community of West African States

This chapter examines the trade patterns of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to see if the organization has lived up to its expectations and what reasons account for its performance to date. Established in 1975, ECOWAS now consists of 15 countries in West Africa that account for about 17.6% of Africa’s land area, 30% of its population, and about 27% of Africa’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2019. At its formation, it was expected to enhance intraregional trade among members. However, examination of its trade flows shows that very little has changed in that direction since its formation. Thus, since 1995, the intraregional export trade within ECOWAS has not risen above 10%. There is lesser trade with other African countries. In contrast, its export trade with the rest of the world has ranged from 88.6% in 1995 to 84.8% in 2019. Import trade has followed a similar pattern. Composition of trade has been dominated by primary goods. In 1995, primary goods accounted for 92.3% of total exports. In 2019, it was 94.2%. In contrast, its import trade was dominated by manufactured goods—67.4% in 1995 and 65.3% in 2019. This state of affairs has been attributed to a wide range of factors, including dependence on industrialized countries, the low content of manufactured goods in member states’ product mix, poor transportation and communication infrastructure, and lack of political will. The chapter argues that the most important of these reasons is the lack of complementarities and competitiveness of ECOWAS’ economies, which in turn is due to lack of vibrant industrial sectors. It is true that the new ECOWAS Treaty expanded its activities beyond trade, and ECOWAS leaders can brag about expanding the Treaty beyond its original narrow confines of trade, but its weakness as a trade organization will affect its effectiveness in other areas of cooperation as well.