The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) makes moves to advance the components of its trade liberalization scheme to give bite to the sub-region economic integration goals. ECOWAS appears determined to address the challenges hindering trade volume among community member states, which is unfortunately low at only 12% in recent times amid other impediments. Boosting cross-border trade in agricultural produce, especially palm oil has also been the center of discussion among the ECOWAS states.
Established in 1975 to promote economic integration, the economic community of west african states (ecowas) has been instrumental in developing institutional mechanisms for regional cooperation. Though the trade volume amongst member states in the region stands at 12% due to the current political situation within the community that has hampered ECOWAS ability to achieve the needs of citizens of the community. To this effect, ECOWAS has advanced its trade liberalization scheme. The regional block is now focused on how to eliminate obstacles on the path of cross border trade in agricultural produce especially oil palm.
“Our region is the producer of palm oil and we have been encountering some problems lately, so we invited all the countries to come and have a fresh discussion in order to solve the issue”.
Massandje Toure-litse, Commissioner for Economic affairs and Agriculture, ECOWAS Commission – Côte d’Ivoire
Six countries in the ECOWAS region produce much of the oil palm and its products consumed in member states. But local production is complemented with imported palm oil. There lies the challenge of custom officials in the region who are unable to differentiate between local and imported palm products. This has made the free movement of palm oil in the region difficult. The six oil producing countries therefore met on March 12, 2024 to find a way to equip custom officials with the tools they need to do their job better without compromising the ECOWAS trade liberalization scheme.
“If you take a country like Nigeria, the capacity, the Nigerian can start living its production in palm oil but to this needle need to put some incentives so that do that through ECOWAS they will be able to take the advantage to cover the Nigerian market and go beyond the Nigerian market and take advantage of all the ECOWAS countries and also do more”.
Solifou Tiemtore, Director of Custom union and Taxation, ECOWAS Commission – Burkina Faso
In Africa, intra continental trade is under 20% which is extremely low. The ECOWAS Community hid in the construction of interconnecting regional infrastructure and policies for its physical integration such as railways, highways and airways namely the Abidjan-Lagos corridor road project which is the busiest economic corridor in the region and which is being extended to connect Abidjan and Praia through Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.