This is the first of the three articles I am working on: The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS.) It was formed in 1975 to foster the economic union of the West African sub-region. To describe ECOWS as a monumental failure would be guilty of inapt language. It is much worse.
Luckily for us, the tectonic shift in global geopolitics and geoeconomics has brought home the ineptitude and the lack of vision of the misrulers of the unfortunate people of West Africa. It validates what we have been writing about over the years.
As usual, I’d like you to read the articles, make your comments, and please try to share them.
Those who have followed his career would know that the 47th POTUS, Donald J. Trump, a low-intelligence reality showman many consider brash and narcissistic, didn’t become President of the United States by being timid. Like him or not, the man says what he has in mind and does what he promises.
He made a career out of wrapping himself in faux patriotism, bellowing, hectoring, bullying, and branding America’s interests on every surface, no matter how foreign. He campaigned like an affronted Patriarch whose children have disobeyed Jehovah, with a clenched fist and a nasty froth at the mouth. A few days to his 100 days in office, Trump has governed with a flamethrower, unending traditional American domestic and foreign policies, leaving both foes and allies bewildered. He recently and unapologetically wielded tariffs like a war club in his crusade to Make America Great Again. The erratic and bombastic old showman from New York appears to love it that he has returned to the center stage of global affairs. One of his first acts—true to his protectionist playbook—was to slap world-shattering tariffs on goods from countries he deems freeloaders in the global economy, which, according to him, was pretty much all the world’s countries. Not even poor Penguins living in a remote Arctic island were spared.
Faithful to his promises over the years, Trump unapologetically wielded tariffs like a war club in his crusade to Make America Great Again. The narcissistic, megalomaniac, erratic, and bombastic old showman from New York has returned to the center stage of global affairs, and he loves the pomp, the pageantry, and the applause. One of his first acts – true to his lifelong protectionist playbook – was to slap world-shattering tariffs on goods from countries he deems freeloaders in the global economy. That his outlandish claims bore little semblance to reality is of little concern to him. It matters little to him that he tells lies like a toddler. What is important to him is to be regarded as the Crowned Global Emperor before who everyone must bow and supplicate.
What did West Africa’s so-called leaders do when Trump’s economic shockwaves came crashing on them?
Absolutely nothing.
There has been no peep, no strategy, no counterplan. The political leaders remain criminally silent, the scholars are not shedding light, and the media gurus continue to waste citizens’ time with inanities.
While the world shifts beneath our feet, the suits in Abuja, Accra, Abidjan, and the other African capitals sit like carved wood – immobile, indifferent, and unprepared. They do not care.
As always, African leaders were never prepared. The gods are supposed to take care of affairs.
While the Chinese, who suffered the Opium Wars, the burning of the Summer Palace, and a century of national humiliation, responded with precision, vision, and purpose, our misrulers in West Africa did what they’ve always done: absolutely nothing. Instead of convening an emergency economic summit, developing a counterstrategy, or activating a self-preservation plan, they remained mute – perhaps hoping and praying that Trump would forget Africa exists, as he often does unless there’s a resource to exploit.
This is not just criminal incompetence. It’s treasonous lethargy.
To the consternation of the people of the sub-region, who are young, vibrant, energetic, and with a bustling infectious entrepreneurial spirit, since its inception in 1975, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has been long on declarations and short on delivery.
The establishment of the organization was a beautiful idea poisoned by mediocrity, elite betrayal, and a tragic addiction to colonial mentality and donor dependency.
We would have expected an organization that has existed for over 40 years to have grown some teeth, developed a spine, and evolved a functional regional economic framework. But no. ECOWAS remains a club of men in starched boubous, agbada, and Italian suits flying first class to conferences. There, they sip bottled water and expensive and exotic drinks with prices like telephone numbers, pose for cameras, and return home after issuing their empty ritual communiqués.
It is said that those who fail to plan plan to fail. We in West Africa did not plan and are reaping the rewards of our lack of foresight and complacency.
As the world economy and global geoeconomics are being reset in real time, ECOWAS is comatose, with neither vision nor strategy.
Keeping faith with his bombastic election rhetoric, Trump threw tariffs around like cheap confetti, tearing up trade agreements, wrecking global supply chains, and triggering inflation in economies from Berlin to Bangkok. Our leaders in ECOWAS were caught napping—or, more likely, attending another useless taxpayer-funded ECOWAS Summit in a luxury hotel, clutching communiqués that mean nothing to the hungry youth of Dakar or the battered trader in Kumasi.
We cannot talk of incompetence here, but a monumental betrayal and sheer intellectual incompetence.
ECOWAS promised “economic integration,” “regional solidarity,” and “peaceful development.” It has not delivered on any of the promises. Instead, citizens have a sclerotic bureaucracy that can’t even organize cross-border railways, let alone defend the region’s economic interests in a hostile world.
A cabal of elites flies in private jets to endless conferences while millions in Freetown and Lome battle to eat once a day. They disguise their incompetence as “regional diplomacy.”
Trump and his tariffs were probably the antidote we in Africa needed for decades of complacent somnambulism.
The rise of Trump and his fellow fascists in the West has exposed the soft underbelly of ECOWAS – a regional economic bloc that can’t negotiate, can’t protect, can’t plan, and can’t respond.
As we have lamented several times in this blog, while the rest of the world scrambled to recalibrate their economies, diversify exports, and build self-sufficiency, ECOWAS remained stuck in a colonial-era plantation mentality: export raw materials, import finished goods, and pray to gods, and wait for foreign aid to help clean up the mess.
Our lack of planning and absence of strategy becomes more infuriating when we remember that we were the only branch of humanity to have suffered the twin carnage of enslavement and colonization. It galls greatly and should disturb us that we learned nothing from our misfortunes.
Let’s contrast our pathetic situation with China.
China was humiliated for a century by Western powers who flooded it with opium, carved up its ports, and mocked its civilization, decided: “Never again.”
Unlike us, the Chinese did not succumb to inertia or wrapped themselves in faux moral superiority. They did not engage in empty sloganeering like “China is Beautiful” or “China Power.”
The Chinese calmly accepted their technical inferiority. They understood that they were not conquered and humiliated because they were Chinese or yellow but simply because they were ignorant and technically inferior to the Europeans. They studied the imperial playbook, read Marx and Machiavelli, copied the West’s science, industry, and banking system, and, most importantly, invested in themselves. They did all these without losing themselves in Western civilizational space; they remained Chinese.
The results of their achievements are there for even the blind to see. So, unlike other regions, China didn’t whimper when Trump’s tariff tsunami hit. The Chinese president did not line up to kiss Trump’s ass as he demanded. China even refused to call him, and they made it clear that there would be no talk unless in polite language. They retaliated strategically and sharply. They subsidized their farmers. They redirected exports. They deepened trade with Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. They doubled down on self-reliance. They did the only rational thing to do to a bully – call his bluff. It was Trump who blinked; the Chinese remained unperturbed. They called him out when he lied about talking to them. Their president made a whirlwind visit to critical allies.
The Chinese did this because, unlike ECOWAS, they knew no one would respect a beggarly supplicant.
Let us now catalog, without sugarcoating, the most egregious failures of ECOWAS that have left 400 million West Africans economically naked in a stormy global climate.
1. Failure to Build Regional Industrial Capacity
ECOWAS has done precious little to end the colonial pattern of raw material exportation. West Africa still exports cocoa but imports chocolate; bauxite imports aluminum; crude oil imports refined petrol. How can such insanity still exist in 2025?
Until Dangote’s refinery came online, there was no major or regional refinery, no pan-West African industrial zones, and no serious strategy to end dependency on Europe and America for finished goods. The ECOWAS Common Industrial Policy? Dead on arrival.
Citizens cannot move freely across borders without being squeezed for bribes by Immigration and Customs officials. Was the whole point of ECOWAS not to foster regional integration and industrial development? Yet, almost 50 years later, West Africa still imports toothpicks, matches, and rice. There is no regional plan to develop a shared industrial base. No automotive assembly strategy. No integrated petrochemical network. Nigeria flares gas while Ghana imports LPG. Ivory Coast exports cocoa while it imports chocolate.
The economic dissonance is enough to drive a sane person mad.
China, by contrast, built entire industrial cities, special economic zones, and technology hubs—not because they love Chinese capitalism but because they hated dependency. Unlike
Unlike us in Africa, the Chinese read and did not forget their history. They saw what Western economic strangulation had done to them during their so-called “Century of Humiliation,” and they vowed never to let it happen again.
Sadly, African leaders, on the other hand, read nothing, learn nothing, and remember nothing.
2. Lack of Strategic Economic Independence
The entire region depends on exporting raw materials and importing finished goods—just as colonialists intended. As I found out during my research, we even use the exact logistics the colonialists built to route every African produce through Europe. When Trump slaps tariffs, he’s not afraid that West Africa will retaliate with cocoa, bauxite, or uranium restrictions. Why? Because we’re not organized.
ECOWAS never built strategic reserves of food, fuel, or minerals. It has no economic shield, financial arsenal, or contingency plan. Like grasshoppers, our thoughts do not go beyond the now.
Apart from being the world’s manufacturing and industrial behemoth, China hoards strategic reserves. It has plentiful gold reserves, rare earth stockpiles, and a state-controlled banking system that works for national development, not for the IMF. China builds banks. We beg banks.
Let’s not touch China’s greatest asset—its immense pool of highly educated and trained workers in every sector.
3. No Coordinated Digital Economy or Technological Vision
Everyone knows the future is digital, and the Fourth Industrial Revolution is here – advanced chips, the Internet of Things, AI, etc.
But what’s ECOWAS doing? Our leaders are meeting and pontificating and drawing up outdated ICT policies. At the same time, our best digital talents are lured to Europe and North America, where their abilities are recognized and well-respected. In 2025, there is no ECOWAS-wide internet backbone, regional data centers, or regional technology research fund. In a world run by algorithms and artificial intelligence, West Africa is still debating GSM spectrum allocation and praying for Elon Musk to beam the internet from the sky. ECOWAS Citizens pay a premium for internet services that are slower than what was in vogue in Europe in the 1990s.
Meanwhile, China dominates AI, 5G/6G, and electric EVs not by accident, panning to Westerners or supplicating to gods, but by state-driven focus. They built tech unicorns because they created an enabling environment. ECOWAS, in contrast, kills innovation with taxes, insane red bureaucratic tape, insecurity, corruption, and epileptic electricity.
Our misrulers in West Africa do not find it shameful that we cannot generate and distribute sufficient electricity to power our few disarticulate industries, even though we live so close to the equator with its all-year-round sunshine.
4. No Unified Currency or Financial Integration
The so-called ECO currency, the fabled dream of a unified West African currency, remains a dream, even a pipedream.
For decades, ECOWAS has been promising a common currency. But how can you build a currency union without a fiscal union? Without harmonized tax systems or coordinated economic policies? The ECO has been delayed, postponed, and watered down and is yet to see the light, while the CFA franc, a colonial relic controlled by Paris, still governs eight of the fifteen ECOWAS states and chains many members to Paris.
There is no doubt that our misrulers are mentally colonized and that they prefer financial slavery to economic freedom.
It should be shameful that after almost 70 years of self-governing ourselves and 50 years after the formation of ECOWAS, a Ghanaian cannot trade with a Togolese without involving a European currency!
China, by contrast, has internationalized the yuan. The country is a leading member of BRICS, which seeks to create a multipolar world of equal sovereigns. They created the AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank). It has sunk trillions of dollars into the BRI Initiative to promote economic sovereignty. In West Africa, we created only self-perpetuating “technical working groups” and “implementation taskforces” that never implement anything.
5. Chronic Insecurity and Political Instability
How can there be economic growth without security? Yet ECOWAS countries remain mired in coups, insurgencies, civil and uncivil wars, and criminal banditry. The region is on fire from the Sahel to the Gulf of Guinea. The ECOWAS standby force is a joke – an underfunded, untrained bureaucracy used more to threaten small, poor, junta-led countries than to tackle real threats. Terrorists roam freely, and kidnappers collect ransoms openly in ECOWAS leading member, Nigeria.
Faced separatist threats, radicalization, and border conflicts. However, the Chinese state responded with discipline, surveillance, counter-insurgency strategies, and ideological re-education. You may disagree with their methods, but their statehood is intact.
Absence of a Shared Civilizational Vision
Perhaps the greatest sin of ECOWAS is spiritual: a failure to imagine a West African future beyond colonial templates. Sadly, our leaders don’t think in civilizational terms. They don’t see themselves as heirs to Mali, Oyo, Benin, Ghana, or Songhai empires and kingdoms. They don’t draw on indigenous knowledge systems, cultural philosophies, or African epistemologies. They worship the World Bank, genuflect to the IMF, and kneel before Western embassies.
Of course, the dominant religions of African misrulers are the religions imposed by the enslavers and the colonialists. These leaders cannot comprehend that religion is cultural and that culture is the superstructure on which lies economic and political structures. They blindly copied and imposed foreign economic and political systems with no local inputs and stupidly wondered why they could not get anything right.
It’s the culture, stupid!
In China, the memory of Confucius, the teachings of Laozi, and the pride of ancient dynasties inform national direction. Even when they embrace modernity, they do so as Chinese. ECOWAS leaders behave as if nothing of value existed before colonization.
7. Failure to Build a Common Market
The ECOWAS Trade Liberalization Scheme is a joke. Traders face multiple tariffs, harassment, and delays at borders. Each country still prioritizes national interest over regional unity. Instead of forging a common market, they bicker over customs revenue like petty warlords.
For citizens of the sub-region, traveling by road – the only affordable means – is a nightmare. Apart from being unmotorable, Customs and Immigration officials do their best to make the lives of citizens hellish with numerous checkpoints where bribes are openly collected. The ECOWAS highway has been under construction for over four decades. In a modern era where logistics is everything, ECOWAS has no integrated power grid. No regional airline. There is no railway network. Even internet connectivity remains pitifully fragmented. Meanwhile, leaders loudly speechify about integration.
8. Failure in Agricultural Self-Sufficiency
West Africa has fertile land, abundant rain, and a youthful population. Yet the region imports over $30 billion in food annually! Why? Because ECOWAS has failed to build robust regional agricultural value chains.
Like mindless or mentally disabled children, we still leave our farmers at the mercy of foreign grain cartels and climate vagaries. And when food prices spike as they constantly do? More IMF loans. More dependency. More hunger.
9. Failure to Secure the Region
From Boko Haram in Nigeria to jihadists in Burkina Faso, ECOWAS has utterly failed to guarantee security. Its so-called standby military force is a ghost army on paper. Over five decades after Kwame Nkrumah advocated an African High Command for the strategic coordination of African armed forces, our leaders give us only press releases condemning violence and empty threats of sanctions.
The recent coups in Mali, Guinea, and Niger showed ECOWAS’s impotence. Its reactions were performative at best and disastrous at worst. It exposes the shallowness of ideas and the unbridled neocolonial mentalities of many of the region’s leaders.
It showed the world that the West African leader’s ance is to France, the UK, and the USA.
10. Failure in Youth Employment and Innovation
According to some statistics, over 10 million West African youth enter the job market annually. ECOWAS has no serious regional plan to harness this demographic dividend, no innovation fund, no startup capital, and no digital economy strategy.
The youth, disillusioned and unemployed, either flee across the Sahara or drown in the Mediterranean. They call it japa in Nigeria. And the ECOWAS leaders? They pontificate at summits, far removed from the desperation in the slums of Dakar or the ghettos of Monrovia.
Let’s return to China, hoping to learn from their experience.
The Chinese suffered horrendous sufferings and humiliations at the hands of “civilizing” foreigners. They suffered the Opium Wars, unequal treaties, and Western imperialism. They were mocked as the “Sick Man of Asia.” But they learned. And they planned.
They built infrastructure before Instagram. They sent students abroad not to twerk or flaunt fake Gucci but to study nuclear physics and computer science. They protected their industries, invested in technology, and used the West’s money to develop domestic industries. They strategically humbly submitted to the leadership of the West until they were ready to confront the world on their terms.
China is not perfect—far from it—but it is respected, even feared, because it refused to be bullied and stood up.
West Africa, meanwhile, appears addicted to humiliation. Like shameless beggars, we still go cap in hand to the same powers that colonized and underdeveloped us. We sti
We treat development as a charity, not a right. Like eternal crybabies, we still cry foul over global unfairness while refusing to build internal strength. We hold endless jamborees and conferences where we study and analyze issues until death with no plan for actualization.
©️ Fẹ̀mi Akọ̀mọ̀làfẹ̀
(Farmer, Writer, Published Author, Essayist, Polemicist, Satirist, and Social Commentator.)
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