By Ibrahim Apekhade Yusuf The Nation
Buoyed by patriotic fervour and compassion to see that West Africa evolves as a major economic bloc within the continent and beyond, stakeholders who converged at the inaugural West Africa Economic Summit (WAES), in Abuja, recently, set machinery in motion to turn around the fortunes of the subregion, reports Ibrahim Apekhade Yusuf
The West African subregion is in dire need of winning strategies and formulas that have the potential to turn around its socioeconomic fortunes for the better and that lofty height can only be achieved by people and inhabitants within and outside its shores.
Specifically, the West Africa Economic Summit (WAES) 2025 which opened in Abuja penultimate Friday with high-level participation from the ECOWAS Heads of State, government officials, business leaders, and regional stakeholders, with the theme, “Unlocking Trade and Investment Opportunities in the Region,” was aimed at strengthening cooperation for economic growth for the entire subregion.
The foregoing was the summary of the message that resonated throughout the two-day event in Abuja, recently.
Declaring the summit open, President Bola Tinubu emphasised the importance of deepening regional partnerships to position West Africa as a globally competitive economic bloc, just as leaders engaged in discussions aimed at harmonising trade policies, improving infrastructure, and fostering youth-driven innovation.
Justifying the need for the summit, President Tinubu said matter-of-factly, “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% — 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 value-chain 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 the government but from unleashing our people’s entrepreneurial spirit. Governments must provide the right environment—law, order, and market-friendly 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.”
Speaking earlier, Ambassador Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Chair of the ECOWAS Council of Ministers, noted that the overarching theme of the summit, ‘Reset the Vision for the Economic Future of the West Africa Region,’ not only speaks to the creative ingenuity of the inhabitants of the subregion talents but shows the enterprise and ingenuity of a people capable of delivering that transformation.
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“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. 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.
“President Bola Ahmed 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 paid 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.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I read last week in an American newspaper that China had a monopoly on some of the rare minerals vital to the new industries on which the future will be built. Not so! We have those same minerals here in Nigeria and across the region. I am sure in this room we could think of a dozen similar examples of what we can offer the international market and where we can do better for each other in the region.
“Bring that investment, bring that local processing, let’s see our transport and economic infrastructure and other building blocks for prosperity grow. It’s happened before. Let this summit, and those that will follow, prove themselves to be part of the fabric of change.”
Also speaking at the summit on a paper titled, ‘Digital Identity and Trade in West Africa’ Dr. Abisoye Coker-Odusote, Director-General/CEO, National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Nigeria, 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% 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% 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.
“At the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), the recent increase in enrolment rates can be attributed to a combination of targeted strategies.
“These include the decentralisation of enrolment through partnerships with licensed Front End Partners (FEPs), the deployment of mobile enrolment kits to hard-to-reach rural areas, and gender-sensitive outreach campaigns designed to bridge the gap in women’s enrolment.
“Additionally, NIMC has improved its backend systems by adopting more efficient biometric capture and data processing technologies, reducing delays and boosting public confidence. These efforts are now positioning Nigeria, and potentially Ghana and Senegal, to support a regional framework for harmonised, secure, and inclusive digital identity across West Africa.
“Harmonising digital identity systems across West Africa is more than a bureaucratic necessity, it is a strategic enabler of regional economic integration. One of the major obstacles to intra-regional trade is the difficulty individuals and small businesses face in verifying their identity across borders, leading to transactional friction, limited access to formal financial services, and lack of trust in cross-border operations. A unified, interoperable digital identity infrastructure will serve as the foundation upon which seamless trade, payment interoperability, and cross-border services can be built.
“West Africa remains one of the poorest subregions in the world. According to the World Bank, over 30% of the population lives below the poverty line. This context makes financial inclusion not just an economic goal but a social imperative.
“Strengthening our Financial Market Infrastructure through a shared digital identity framework will accelerate onboarding to financial services, enable digital wallets, mobile payments, and cross-border remittance flows, and increase participation in formal economies. It will also reduce the cost of KYC (Know Your Customer) processes, allowing micro, small, and informal enterprises to access credit and trading platforms that were previously out of reach.
“Importantly, when underserved grassroots communities, especially women, youth, and informal traders, are empowered with secure digital identities, they are not just being counted; they are being connected to opportunity. They can register their businesses, open accounts, receive digital payments, and engage in regulated, secure trade not only within their borders but across the continent.
“This is where the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) stands to benefit most. The AfCFTA aspires to create the world’s largest single market, yet its success depends on people’s ability to engage in that market efficiently and securely.
“Digital identity, when harmonised across borders, becomes the trust layer that supports this market. It ensures that an entrepreneur in Cotonou can transact confidently with a supplier in Kano or a logistics partner in Accra. With such trust in place, transaction volumes increase, new markets are unlocked, and the AfCFTA goals, especially around inclusive trade and poverty reduction, are met more quickly and sustainably.
“By building regional identity systems that are secure, inclusive, and interoperable, West Africa can leapfrog the traditional barriers to development and construct a trade ecosystem where opportunity is borderless, prosperity is shared, and dignity is digitally guaranteed.
“Advancing Digital Identity for Regional Trade and IntegrationThe time to act is now. To unlock the full potential of intra-African trade and regional prosperity, it is critical that these five stakeholders must align around a shared digital identity vision for West Africa.
“The governments of West African Nations must prioritise digital identity as infrastructure, just as vital as roads, ports, and power. This means allocating national budgets to identity programmes, embedding identity into trade and financial policies, and ensuring legal frameworks enable cross-border recognition of credentials.
“Identity Management Agencies such as Nigeria’s NIMC, Ghana’s NIA, and their counterparts must strengthen cooperation to achieve interoperability across systems. This includes adopting shared technical standards, synchronising enrolment protocols, and supporting countries still in the early stages of implementation through knowledge exchange and capacity building.
“ECOWAS and WAEMU must take the lead in institutionalising this agenda at the regional level. This includes establishing a West African Digital Identity Working Group, introducing a regional digital ID charter, and investing in infrastructure that supports cross-border identity verification for trade, migration, and security.
“The Private Sector, especially banks, fintechs, telcos, and logistics firms, must be active partners. They must integrate digital ID verification into their onboarding processes, build digital trust networks, and offer inclusive financial products tailored to newly identified individuals and small-scale traders.
“Civil society, local communities, and traditional leaders must help drive grassroots awareness and adoption. Through community advocacy, digital literacy, and trusted networks, they can reduce resistance, boost uptake, and ensure that identity systems are inclusive of women, the unbanked, and the undocumented.
“Together, we can move beyond fragmented national systems toward a truly regional identity framework, one that empowers our people to trade, transact, travel, and transform. Let us not wait for another generation to inherit this challenge. Let us solve it now, collaboratively and decisively. West Africa’s economic future depends on it.”
Also commenting on the outcome of the summit, Akinola Ayobami Steven of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Lagos, noted matter-of-factly that the two-day event underscored the significance of strategic, cross-border cooperation anchored in shared economic priorities.
“The summit’s findings emphasised the need for policy alignment, infrastructure connectivity, private sector engagement, and youth empowerment to drive regional development. These themes are intricately linked to the concept of economic diplomacy, which has emerged as a vital component of foreign policy in the 21st century,” he stressed.
Expatiating, Steven said, “Economic diplomacy involves leveraging trade agreements, investment frameworks, and economic partnerships to build influence, mitigate risk, and pursue geopolitical goals. By forging strategic development partnerships, nations can create new opportunities for growth, influence, and cooperation. In West Africa, economic diplomacy can play a pivotal role in promoting regional integration, enhancing economic resilience, and advancing strategic interests.
“The potential benefits of economic diplomacy for Nigeria and West Africa are substantial. By harnessing economic diplomacy, the region can enhance regional integration and cooperation, increase trade and investment flows, promote economic growth and development, build strategic partnerships with other regions and countries, and advance regional interests and influence global economic policies.”
The WAES summit highlighted several key strategic reflections that are relevant to economic diplomacy in West Africa. Policy alignment and infrastructure connectivity are essential to unlock intra-regional trade and long-term resilience.
Additionally, private capital and entrepreneurship must be more intentionally integrated into regional development strategies. The youth demographic is a powerful asset, but only if supported through sustained investment in education, skills development, and enterprise support. Furthermore, governance and institutional accountability remain decisive factors in the pace and credibility of regional progress.
As the summit wound down, one takeaway for the participants at the high-level session was the message of hope and assurance from some of the leading lights of the subregion who hold the view and very strongly too that things would definitely give.