ANAYO EZUGWU examines President Bola Tinubu’s push for transformation of West Africa towards deeper economic cooperation and political integration at the just concluded West Africa Economic Summit 2025

On June 21, President Bola Tinubu reiterated his desire to deepen political and economic integration, enhance trade and investment cooperation across the West Africa subregion. The President said the region needs to fast-track its integration agenda as a critical foundation for sustainable peace, security and prosperity of the people of the region.

Speaking at the inaugural West Africa Economic Summit (WAES) 2025 in Abuja, Tinubu expressed his commitment to inclusive dialogue and regional cooperation. He noted that the region needs to forge a new path that leaves behind fragmentation and missed opportunities and moves toward deeper integration, collective action, and shared prosperity.

Tinubu said: “We gather at a decisive moment. Today is not about celebrating how far we’ve come but forging a new path that leaves behind fragmentation and missed opportunities and moves us toward deeper integration, collective action, and shared prosperity.

“West Africa is one of the last great frontiers of economic growth. Yet opportunity alone does not guarantee transformation. Opportunity is not destiny.

We must earn it through vision, integration, policy coherence, collaboration, and capital alignment. “Intra-regional trade remains under 10 per cent – a challenge we can no longer afford to ignore. The low trade is not due to a failure of will but a coordination failure.

The global economy will not wait for West Africa to get its act together, and neither should we. Rather than competing in isolation or relying on external partners, we must strengthen our regional value chains, invest in infrastructure, and coordinate our policies. “Our region’s greatest asset is its youthful population.

However, this demographic promise can quickly become a liability if not matched by investments in education, digital infrastructure, innovation, and productive enterprise. For example, Nigeria invests in skills development, digital connectivity, and youth empowerment. But no one country can do this alone. Our prosperity depends on regional supply chains, energy networks, and data frameworks.

We must design them together – or they will collapse separately. “From the Lagos-Abidjan Highway and West African Power Pool to digital and creative industry initiatives, our joint projects demonstrate what is possible when we work together. But we must do more. We must move from declarations to concrete deals; from policy frameworks to practical implementation. “Let us also recognise that Africa was left behind in previous industrial revolutions.

We cannot afford to miss the next one. Our rare minerals power tomorrow’s green technologies—yet it is not enough to be resource-rich; we must become valuechain smart and invest in local processing and regional manufacturing. The era of pit to port must end. We must turn our mineral wealth into domestic economic value—jobs, technology, and manufacturing.

“The fundamental transformation will not come solely from government but from unleashing our people’s entrepreneurial spirit. Governments must provide the right environment—law, order, and marketfriendly policies—while the private sector drives growth.

“Our task is to find new and effective ways to invest in our collective future, improve the business climate, and create opportunities for our youth and women.

Let us emerge from this summit with actionable outcomes: a renewed commitment to ease of doing business, enhanced intra-regional trade, improved infrastructure connectivity, and innovative ideas that move our people from poverty to prosperity.

Let us build a West Africa that is investable, competitive, and resilient—one that leads with vision, responsibility, and unity. This is the new West African proposition. Let us make it real, let us make it bankable.”

Tuggar’s new opportunities and platforms

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Tuggar, on his part, said West Africa needs new opportunities and platforms to build shared histories and proud traditions for a better future. He said President Tinubu is offering the region the chance to build on changes that would transform the subregion. His words: “Our purpose is to ‘reset the vision for the economic future of West African region.’ Now, that is quite an ambitious target.

And let’s be honest; it’s up to the creative talents, enterprise and ingenuity of our people to deliver that transformation. Governments and organisations are at their best when they realise the limits of their influence and power. “So, we are here today to build on that enabling environment. We are not re-inventing the wheel.

As an economic community, West Africa enjoys freedom of movement and a framework to facilitate trade, pool electricity and integrate transport corridors. Our job today is to build on what we have and to find new ways that add momentum to the search for peace and stability, prosperity and growth.

“We can find some answers to the future in how we understand our past. Long before this city was founded, before independence movements and colonial cartography, the people of this region related and traded — not through treaties, but through brotherhood and trust.

Livestock from the Sahel moved southward; kola nuts from the forest zone moved northward. Markets such as Salaga, Katsina, and Kano were economic engines long before the modern state existed. “Let’s reflect on that for a moment: markets. Markets are a West African story, a story about trade, innovation and the generation of wealth and opportunity.

We still believe in free markets – not a free-for-all, but markets that thrive because of effective co-operation between supply and demand, regulated by accepted and acceptable parameters. “Let us not forget that in 2024, West Africa exported goods valued at over $166 billion. Yet only 8.6 percent of that trade remained within our borders. Imports follow the same pattern — heavily tilted toward partners outside the continent.

Machinery and manufactured goods from China, India, the United States, and the European Union dominate our import flows, while we continue to export unprocessed raw materials. “This trajectory is untenable – and the issue is not just capacity, but orientation. We know what economists call the informal sector finds ways to deliver what the market wants, bypassing borders and regulations when they are too slow and bureaucratic.

As governments, as states and the region, we need to do more to make it easy to bring that activity within the formal sector, to bring with it the economies of scale and other efficiencies that will accelerate growth and help our entrepreneurs. “And this is already happening: this Summit, as envisioned by President Tinubu, is the chance to build on that change. We are not offering royal charters to monopoly corporations anymore.

That was a long time ago. Our job now, our responsibility, is to help find the best way to deliver goods and services to our people, to help the private sector and the free market to do what they do best, generating investment and building capacity. We want people to see the difference. “I say to our friends here today in industry, banking and other sectors: President Tinubu and the other leaders present are listening – let’s stop outsourcing the future and take back control of our destiny.

We want this summit to show that West Africa can deliver the space where government, industry and other stakeholders can meet and make deals, without having to transplant ourselves, shivering, to one summit or another in wintry venues. “It’s good to talk, better still to deliver. And let’s do that in Abuja and Abidjan, from the Sahel to the sea.

There is literally a deal room here at the Summit. We are not here to tell the private sector its business – but to give you the space to grow. Use it! “President Bola Tinubu promised to develop this event when he took over as ECOWAS Chair in 2023. His own background, in the private sector and public life, as a proud but well-travelled Nigerian, had convinced him of the urgency of this moment.

“West Africa, for centuries an equal partner in international trade, was left behind by the industrial revolution and patterns of development that reduced our comparative advantage and still leaves us struggling for fair access to markets and finance. One example: we pay the costs for the climate emergency but received few of the benefits of the process that created it. Competition is healthy, and it is in our common interest to keep that competition healthy and positive for all stakeholders.

As a region, West Africa has the scale, talent and critical mass that no individual state alone can match. “Now we have a one-off chance to leverage the profound changes already shaping our common future, as advances in technology, processing and data stretch the imagination of what is possible ahead. West Africa can and should be part of this revolution.”

NIMC boss makes case for digital identity and data

Also speaking at the summit, the Director-General of National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Abisoye CokerOdusote, said West Africa needs a digital identity and data to facilitate its political and economic integration. She said West Africa’s trade landscape is dynamic but underutilised.

While official data from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) shows only 10–15 per cent of trade is intra-regional, informal commerce could raise that figure significantly.

“Annual trade within ECOWAS averages about USD 208 billion, with Nigeria accounting for roughly 76 per cent of regional flows. Institutions like ECOWAS, the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), and initiatives such as the West African Competitiveness Observatory aim to reduce trade barriers and harmonise customs procedures.

Harmony, however, can only be fully realised when we go beyond shared culture, languages, music, and cuisine, and begin to commonise our identity in digital terms. “A unified digital identity system is an economic and developmental imperative to our regional growth.

When citizens can move across borders with a recognised and verifiable identity, they can trade, access services, establish trust in new markets, and participate meaningfully in regional growth. Digital identity strengthens trade by making the informal visible, reducing fraud, and enabling access to financial services, logistics, and government programs across national boundaries.

“Across West Africa, identity management systems are at different stages of development. Nigeria, through the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), has enrolled over 120 million citizens under the National Identification Number (NIN) system.

Thanks to recent technological upgrades and strategic collaborations, major issues of harmonisation and duplication have been effectively addressed. “Ghana’s digital ID system, managed by the National Identification Authority, is widely integrated across banking, voting, and public services. Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal have also made notable progress with biometric systems linked to social programs.

However, several countries, including Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, still face gaps in coverage and interoperability. This disparity weakens cross-border trade, mobility, and trust. For meaningful regional integration, identity must be reliable, digital, and recognised beyond national borders.”