Fifteen member countries, a treaty signed at Lagos and a Commission at Abuja: the West African bloc

Background

West Africa's regional grouping is the Economic Community of West African States, written ECOWAS, a 15-member body set up by the treaty of Lagos with a mandate of promoting economic integration in every field of activity of its countries. Its member countries are Togo, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Niger and Mali, together with Liberia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Ghana, The Gambia, Cote d'Ivoire, Cape Verde, Burkina Faso and Benin. Collective self-sufficiency was the founding idea, and as a trading union it is meant to build one large bloc through economic cooperation; industry, transport, telecommunications, energy, agriculture, natural resources, commerce, monetary and financial questions and social as well as cultural matters are among the fields it works in. Its administrative machinery sits at Abuja in Nigeria, where the Secretariat was turned into a Commission so that the body could press on with integration. A President now heads the Commission in place of the former Executive Secretary, and with a Vice President, 12 Commissioners and an Auditor-General makes up 15 officers who are together called Statutory Appointees, each holding a four-year tenure. Among its Institutions are the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development, Specialised Technical Committees, a Council of Ministers, the Community Court of Justice, the Community Parliament, the Commission, and above them the Authority of Heads of States and Government. Specialised Agencies alongside them include the West African Health Organisation, the West African Monetary Agency and a regional group against money laundering, among others.