AN APPRAISAL OF THE CONCEPT AND PRACTICE OF ECONOMIC INTEGRATION UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW: A CASE STUDY OF ECOWAS

📄 Project Abstract

The partitioning and subsequent introduction of European colonial governance in West Af-rica with its policy of legitimate trade in one or two cash crops to serve Europe's industrial needs eroded indigenous industrial skills and the basis for development of sustainable interac-tive economic activities in West Africa. As a result, by the time most of the new nation states of West Africa gained independence in the 1960s, they were left with structurally fragile and highly disarticulated economies with inherent acute and devastating price distortions in the international commodity markets, as currently being suffered by Nigeria and Ghana in rela-tion to crude oil exports, and Cote d'Ivoire in relation to its cocoa exports. These challenges were further exacerbated by issues such as bad governance, political instability, lack of ade-quate diversification, infrastructural deficit and lack of political will amongst others. It was this socio-economic disintegration that ECOWAS is designed to ...