By O鈥橳EGA OGRA
For all the ambition that has long swirled around regional integration in West Africa, the reality has remained underwhelming.
Trade among ECOWAS member states still lags just below 10%. That figure is a qui-et indictment in an era where continents compete not just on Gross Domestic Products (GDP), but on supply chains, self-reli-ance, and economic coherence.
At the West Africa Economic Summit (WAES) 2025 in Abuja, we saw a region no longer con-tent with aspiration alone. Pres-ident Bola Ahmed Tinubu, both convener and the then ECOWAS Chairman, set the tone from the outset.
鈥淚ntra-regional trade re-mains under 10 per cent鈥 a challenge we can no longer afford to ignore. The global economy will not wait for West Africa鈥 neither should we.鈥
This was not another echo chamber of intentions. It was a summit where delivery was non-negotiable.
Nigeria laid its cards on the table through a $15 billion investment pipeline focused squarely on trade-enabling infrastructure ranging from roads and power to industrial corridors and digital frame-works.
The Lagos鈥揂bidjan highway project gained renewed momen-tum. A dedicated deal room fa-cilitated over $400 million in ad-vanced transactions at the end of the first day alone, and the AfreximBank-led Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) is finally moving from pilot to real-world scale.
But, behind the policy head-lines was a shift in tone. WAES 2025 felt less like a stage-man-aged conference and more like a region waking up to its own untapped power.
The room was filled not only with heads of state, but also re-gional investors, development fi-nanciers, digital entrepreneurs, and mid-sized manufacturing firms, finally being given a seat at the table.
There was an unmistakable energy to it: this time, West Africa was not just presenting problems, it was engineering solutions.
Perhaps most crucially, the summit underscored that inte-gration cannot happen without identity.
As Abisoye Coker-Odusote, CEO of Nigeria鈥檚 National Iden-tity Management Commission, said, 鈥淥ur markets are bustling, our people are trading, but our systems are not speaking to each other.鈥
Her call for cross-border dig-ital identity recognition wasn鈥檛 just a technical policy. It was a demand to unlock the informal economy that sustains millions.
Nigeria鈥檚 NIN (National Iden-tification Number) enrollment has surpassed 120 million, and conversations are underway to link it with ECOWAS-wide nteroperability. This would enable real-time identity ver-ification, accelerate customs clearance, and bring informal traders into formal credit sys-tems.
In regions like West Africa, where trust deficits often delay trade, a regional digital ID could be as transformative as any road or railway.
But, infrastructure remains core. The Lagos鈥揂bidjan corri-dor, long delayed by bureaucra-cy and budgetary inertia, is now entering implementation with coordinated funding discus-sions involving Afdb, Afrexim-bank, ECOWAS, and private equity partners.
With over 70% of West Africa鈥檚 trade moving by road, fixing this artery could shift the entire logistics landscape.
Just as important are the reg-ulatory frameworks that must travel with the roads. WAES 2025 gave rare airtime to trade officials, customs and border managers, many of whom high-lighted inconsistent documenta-tion standards, technology gaps, and sometimes outright policy contradictions across member states despite region-wide trade protocols being in place.
These are the mundane, back-end frictions that make or break trade efficiency. Harmonising these systems is not glamorous work, but it is foundational.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, WTO Director-General, echoed the urgency, noting that the region could unlock a $500 billion trade potential.
But, trade is not just about volume. It is about velocity, which is how quickly goods, ser-vices, payments, and people can move without friction. And that requires more than declara-tions. It requires the deliberate dismantling of invisible walls between neighbours.
Trade finance also made a strong showing. Sessions on youth-focused industrialisation and SME empowerment re-vealed a critical truth: most Af-rican businesses are too small to export alone, too informal to qualify for traditional finance, and too overlooked by multilat-eral investment programs.
Nigeria used WAES to unveil efforts to bridge this financing gap through blended capital models and new instruments via the Development Bank of Nigeria and the Bank of Indus-try.
Beyond speeches, the action points were impossible not to notice. PAPSS, fast-track ECOWAS digital ID integration, harmonise customs regimes, invest in logistics, and align border technology. All of these are achievable, but they require follow-through, not fanfare.
President Tinubu鈥檚 closing challenge captured the moment succinctly.
鈥淟et us move from declara-tions to concrete deals鈥 build a West Africa that is investable, competitive, and resilient,鈥 he said.
But, the deeper challenge is this: Will West Africa maintain the tempo once the summit lights dim? Reform in the region often arrives in bursts. It could be a breakthrough today, a slowdown tomorrow. This time must be different. The stakes are no longer regional. They are global. In a fractured world increasingly defined by region-al blocs, West Africa must move as a bloc or simply move out of the way. The former is non-ne-gotiable.
If the region rises to meet this challenge, WAES 2025 will not merely be remembered as a conference but will be re-membered as the turning point at which West Africa stopped trading with hesitation and started trading with purpose and power.
O鈥檛ega Ogra is the Senior Special Assistant to the President of Nigeria on Digital Strategy, Communica-tions, and Engagement. He leads the Presidential Office of Digital Engagement and Strategy, where he advises on public policy messaging, innovation, and the intersection of governance and technology. He writes from Abuja.