The promise of West African integration was never meant to be a slogan for summits.
It was meant to be a practical pathway to development, built on the free movement of people, goods, services and capital.
At the heart of that promise is the ECOWAS Protocol on Free Movement of Persons, Right of Residence and Establishment, and its twin, the ECOWAS Trade Liberalisation Scheme (ETLS), which guarantees free movement of goods.
Yet, more than four decades after these protocols were signed, the sub-region is still behaving like a collection of suspicious neighbours rather than a community.
If ECOWAS is really serious about integration and using trade to develop the various economies, then the protocols must be respected in letter and spirit by all.
The protocols come with clear rules.
They are not a free-for-all.
The most important safeguard is the Rules of Origin (RoO).
The RoO sets the ceiling for allowable exports to one another’s economies.
It defines what qualifies as a community-origin product.
To benefit from ETLS, a product must be wholly produced in a member state or must have at least 60 per cent of its raw materials originating from ECOWAS, or must have undergone a substantial transformation with at least 30 per cent value addition within the community.
Industrial products must also be approved by the ECOWAS Commission after inspection.
That high bar is designed to prevent dumping, to protect local industries, and to ensure that goods from outside the region are not simply repackaged in one member state and pushed into others duty-free.
It is a fair, transparent and collective rule, agreed by all 15 member states.
Recent developments in the sub-region point to a worrying trend.
Reports indicate that some member states, in the name of protecting local industries or enforcing standards, have unilaterally imposed additional RoO requirements, special permits, or outright bans on products that have already been certified as of ECOWAS origin.
Trucks loaded with palm oil, textiles, processed foods, cosmetics and building materials — products made in Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal, Nigeria — are held for weeks at borders, turned back, or slapped with full import duties as if they were coming from Europe or Asia.
This is not integration.
This is protectionism dressed in technical jargon.
Take Ghana as an example.
Ghanaian manufacturers who have invested heavily to meet ETLS requirements, obtained their certificates of origin from the Ministry of Trade and
Industry and been vetted by ECOWAS inspectors, still face insurmountable non-tariff barriers when they try to export to some neighbouring markets.
The same fate befalls Nigerian, Ivorian and Togolese traders trying to bring goods into Ghana.
The result is that intra-ECOWAS trade remains abysmally low — less than 15 per cent of total trade — while we continue to import over 80 per cent of what we consume from outside the continent.
Who benefits from this? Certainly not the 400 million people of ECOWAS, 60 per cent of whom are under 25 and desperate for jobs that trade and industry could create. The danger is twofold.
First, unilateral actions erode trust. The ETLS works on mutual recognition.
If Ghana does not trust Nigeria’s certificate of origin and Nigeria does not trust Ghana’s, then the entire scheme collapses.
If one big economy can rewrite RoO to suit its domestic politics, what stops every other member state from doing the same?
We will end up with 15 different RoO regimes in a region that is supposed to have one, making a mockery of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which is supposed to build on regional blocs such as ECOWAS.
We must be honest about the underlying issues.
Many of these unilateral measures stem from genuine concerns: influx of substandard goods, smuggling, unfair competition from goods that are fraudulently labelled as ECOWAS origin, and the fear that opening markets will kill infant industries.
These concerns are legitimate, but the solution is not to break the protocol.
The solution is to strengthen the protocol’s enforcement mechanisms. ECOWAS must act decisively.
Second, the ECOWAS Commission must be empowered to sanction member states that unilaterally impose new RoO or non-tariff barriers outside the ETLS framework.
The current system, where offending states are merely cautioned, is not working.
The Commission must fast-track the establishment of a regional Trade Observatory and an effective dispute settlement mechanism where a Ghanaian exporter blocked in another member state can get redress within days, not months.
Third, national standards bodies — Ghana Standards Authority, Standards Organisation of Nigeria, etc. — must harmonise standards rather than use standards as a weapon.
The vision of ECOWAS’ founding fathers in 1975 was clear: use trade to develop our economies collectively so we can negotiate better with the rest of the world.
That vision led to the protocol on free movement.
If we allow individual countries to cherry-pick which parts of the protocol to obey, we betray that vision.
