EXCERPT FROM THE INTERVIEW

Free movement within the region:  huge achievement for people, great obstacles for goods

The fact that ECOWAS is a region where citizens can travel without the requirement for a visa is a huge achievement, and as you know, so far, on the continent, it is the only region, and it’s a large region, in fact the largest region.

Of course, we must continue to work on the roadblocks and other obstacles to get to optimal free movement of persons but in particular of goods and services. Of course, on the capital front, in the area of free movement of capital, a lot has been achieved, largely because of a number of banks, which now have offices across the region.

We need to work more on the movement on the roads, and the clearing of goods, so that if a business person or an individual wants to import something from Guinea and they are in Côte d’Ivoire, there shouldn’t be that many obstacles. It is when we are able to facilitate this free and quick movement of goods that we will indeed be able to talk about strong market integration.

There should be a strong advocacy for linking West Africa by rail, it will be cheaper in a way over the long haul, and it will be a good way of bypassing all these unauthorized roadblocks.

A weak link in the integration project remains weak infrastructure in West Africa. The roads are not in the best of shape. There is hardly any railway to talk about. Railway linkages, if we arrive at the point where you can take a train from Lagos to go to Abidjan, that will boost a lot of trade because all of these unauthorized personnel who stand on the road and prevent easy movement. They will find it difficult to stop a train from moving.

There should be a strong advocacy for linking West Africa by rail, it will be cheaper in a way over the long haul, and it will be a good way of bypassing all these unauthorized roadblocks.

And of course, energy interconnection is important. We have huge energy resources in West Africa and we need to harness this and to distribute it across the region to stimulate and boost economic movement. It should be a healthy combination of all sources.

ECOWAS AND UEMOA: avoiding duplication and working towards monetary integration

When it comes to wider issues of integration, like creating market integration, economic integration, a customs union, regional infrastructural development, I think it would be good that countries within the West African space align and orient their efforts within the schemes already developed and harmonized between ECOWAS (http://bit.ly/2xfWzgL ) and UEMOA (The West African Economic and Monetary Union or WAEMU), comprising eight countries which share the franc CFA currency http://bit.ly/2gXEN8m).

We have to avoid duplication because our countries simply don’t have the resources to have two different plans. It’s the same rules when we talk of building a road from Dakar to N’Djamena, that is for UEMOA countries but it is also for ECOWAS countries. So let’s see how there is a division of labor and who will handle that. If we talk of railway development, the space overlaps, so the teams for infrastructure need to harmonize who is handling which portion.

We have to avoid duplication because our countries simply don’t have the resources to have two different plans

In the area of monetary integration, frankly the day you achieve monetary integration in West Africa, there will be no need to talk of two organizations. In the broad scheme of things, this is the perspective, the vision of regional leaders that we will work ultimately to a common currency, and at that point there will naturally be a fusion of the two organizations.

West African countries have a good track record of showing that the leaders and the people, civil society organizations etc., can create a space where there’s expanding freedoms and democracy and clear rules of governance

I also have the perspective that it is all leading to the convergence of the two organizations and a common West African space. We face the same challenges in this common West African space, challenges of development, of poverty, of low intra-regional trade, low level of development of regional infrastructure, of peace and security. West African countries have a good track record of showing that the leaders and the people, civil society organizations etc., can create a space where there’s expanding freedoms and democracy and clear rules of governance, accountability, and constitutionally accepted norms for election of leaders and governance.

There is a good understanding between UEMOA and ECOWAS, that when it comes to the issues that touch on the safety and security, peace of the entire region, the ECOWAS leads and works closely with the AU (African Union), and then of course with the UN, and other partners such as the EU (European Union).

Dr Mohamed Ibn Chambas was the last Executive Secretary of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) from 2002 to 2005 and the first President of the ECOWAS Commission from 2006 to 2009. He has worked for the organization at a pivotal moment of its evolution, during the institutional reforms of 2006.

Born December 7^th, 1950 in Ghana, Mohamed Ibn Chambas is a lawyer, diplomat, politician and academic from Ghana. He holds degrees in political science from the University of Ghana, Legon (BA 1973) and Cornell University Ithaca, New York (MA 1977, Ph.D. (1980) and a law degree from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.

Dr. Chambas’s experience on the international stage in Africa goes back a long way. Among his first political posts in Ghana, he was Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1987. From there, he has been Deputy of Bimbilla from 1993 to 1996 and Deputy Minister of Education in charge of Higher Education in 2000. He will restart his international activities by being a member of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group which has worked to facilitate a transition to constitutional democratic governance in Nigeria, Sierra Leone and The Gambia. Chambas also played an important role as mediator between the parties of the first civil war in Liberia in the 1990s, and later during the civil war in Côte d’Ivoire in the early 2000s.

At the end of his term at ECOWAS, Mohamed Ibn Chambas was appointed Secretary-General of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP Group) in November 2009. In December 2012, he was appointed African Union-United Nations Joint Special Representative for Darfur and Head of the Hybrid Peacekeeping Operation in Darfur.

Since September 2014, he has been the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Office for West Africa (UNOWA), now United Nations Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS).In this contribution to the debate on regional organizations in West Africa, he speaks with WATHI as a citizen of West Africa regarding the challenges of integration in the region.