Engendering an Endogenous Framework for Socio-economic Development in the ECOWAS 1 Sub-region

Introduction

Ostensibly, attainment of a home-grown development platform for the West African sub-region, through unhindered cross-border interaction among its people, was the conceptual goal for creating the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in 1975. Over time and space, such conceptual intent has remained largely elusive due to prioritization of national interests over larger regional interests by various ECOWAS member states; ECOWAS comprises Benin Republic, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea Conakry, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo. Routinely, continued influence of former colonial powers (and other global powers) in some of the ECOWAS countries have been implicated in this regard. To a considerable extent, the functioning of the economies and in certain situation, the whole social space, is being regulated by former colonial powers, as is the case, for instance, in most Francophone West African countries where France still holds sway – Benin Republic, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Mali, Senegal and so forth (Adeniran, 2012: 1).

The West African socio-economic space has been dotted with eight monetary zones, making inter-community transactions and interactions Herculean. Equally, the ECOWAS protocol on free movement of person and goods, which seeks to obliterate all obstacles on the path of socio-economic integration within the sub-region, has remained the most visibly abused by the ECOWAS member states (ECOWAS, 2011: 2–3). The protocol had projected the institutionalization of a single socio-economic space for the sub-region where all citizens could tap into opportunities domiciled in member states. Such opportunities have included arable farm land, coastal areas (for utilization by landlocked member states, such as Burkina Faso and Mali), employment for French and English language experts and open access to natural resources in member states.

In this study, the role of uncensored cross-border interaction in enabling the emergence of an endogenous platform for socio-economic integration and development of the ECOWAS sub-region is explored. An insight into current migratory trends within the sub-region is presented. The article includes probable outcomes derivable from the process of the interaction of identities along the Nigerian–Ivorian migratory corridor and how these impact on specific transnational intents of individuals and the larger sub-region. More significantly, the relevance of an emergent transactional culture of ‘transnational simultaneity’ in West Africa is presented, vis-à-vis the process of regional socio-economic integration and development.

Objectives of Research

Methods for the Study

Being an exploratory research design, the study utilized primary data, sourced through in-depth interviews and secondary data, obtained from evaluation research (that is, governmental and organizational sources). While relevant first-hand information and other useful hints on patterns of prevalent trans-border practices were derived from individuals with varying degrees of involvement in cross-border socio-economic activities within the ECOWAS sub-region, that is, from routine cross-border network traders to long-term network migrants, applied secondary data assisted in buttressing the study’s specificities.

Purposive sampling method, which necessitated snowballing technique, was used in selecting the research subjects (that is, the interviewees) in both study locations of Ejigbo, Nigeria and Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire. Due to the reflexive nature of the study, the research instruments were designed in longitudinal and case study format, with the results transcribed, coded and interpreted using content analysis and ethnographic summary. A total of six months was expended on the study.

Dependency Dictates in Understanding Underdevelopment Within the ECOWAS

The globalizing capitalist framework has been generally affirmed, by notable dependency theorists, as the centrifugal force for the subsisting pattern of dependent relationships across the world. Indeed, ‘contemporary underdevelopment is in large part the historical product of past and continuing economic and other relations between the satellite underdeveloped and the now developed metropolitan countries’ ( Frank, 1972: 3).

At another realm, dependency is essentially viewed as a condition of economic (political and cultural) growth of a country predicated upon identifiable external dictates and modalities that are theoretically deemed to have more rational patterns of socio-economic transformation. As such, varying ideas for socio-economic transformation are being introduced in such developing societies as the ECOWAS sub-region, intermittently, by the advanced world without necessarily taking into account the cultural specificities of the receiving countries. Arguably, related developmental intents are seen as mere ideological expansion of the already developed societies.

In depicting dependency as a representation of an historical peculiarity, Dos Santos notes that it essentially:

shapes a certain structure of the world economy such that it favours some countries to the detriment of others and limits the developmental possibilities of the subordinate economies …. a situation in which the economy of a certain group of countries is conditioned by the development and expansion of another economy, to which their own is subjected. (1971: 226)

However, in all of the explanations of what dependency actually seeks to project, one issue has remained recurrent: that a people with ideas for social progress imposes these on a people without any such ideas or without the political will to carry out such ideas (this is relevant to the ECOWAS and other sub-Saharan African nations). Since such ideological imposition is usually executed without any formidable recourse to the institutional or cultural specificities of the receiving societies, notable incongruence is seen impeding the developmental course of such receiving societies.

Meanwhile, three features of the ‘dependency’ postulate are of significance to the analysis of underdevelopment within the ECOWAS functioning. One, that ‘dependency’ features the international arena as a composition of dichotomous attributes, variously described as ‘dominant/dependent’ or ‘centre/periphery’. The dominant states are the advanced industrial nations in the Group of Eight (G8). The dependent states are those developing states of the ‘South’ – Latin America, Asia and Africa (such as the ECOWAS group), which usually have a low human development index and routinely rely on the export of a single commodity for foreign exchange earnings, such as crude oil in the case of Nigeria and Niger Republic and cocoa in the case of Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana.

Two, a popular summation of the ‘dependency’ orientation has been that external forces are of unique significance to the social, economic and political activities within the dependent states. Such external forces have entailed international commodity markets, foreign aid processes and any other means by which the industrialized countries can represent their extant interests within the global social space. Within the ECOWAS sub-region, numerous military bases of Western countries still exist, especially in the Francophone countries; so also, their grip on the regional economic activities has been quite considerable. For instance, the continued grip of France on the socio-economic and political sphere of its former colonies in West Africa, such as Mali, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, etc. presents a notable case study. French troops carried out the arrest of Laurent Gbagbo (former Ivorian President) at the peak of Cote d’Ivoire political interregnum in 2011.

Third, ‘dependency’ has tended to present vagaries of the relationship between the dominant and the dependent states as being skewed to the advantage of the industrialized countries. Such existing relationship between these two sets of societies has not only been reinforcing, but also intensifying the prevalent unequal patterns of interactions. Generally, the dependency perspective seeks to explain the problem with the developmental enterprise among underdeveloped nations by presenting the patterns of socio-economic interaction across the globe as being uneven (Ferraro, 1996). In buttressing this standpoint, the sponsoring of the Symposium on the ECOWAS development in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in 2010 by the European Union (ECOWAS, 2010) and the donation of the headquarters of the African Union to Africa by the government of China in 2012 (Poplak, 2012) could be viewed in this light.

Therefore, the idea of a global culture has further enabled the prevalence of various interactive imbalances that served as the precursors to socio-economic retrogression in the global south (such as in the ECOWAS sub-region). In perpetuity, however, the dependent states have been the suppliers of cheap labor (both skilled and unskilled through the platform of international migration) and raw materials that support the economies of the advanced societies (lack of technical knowhow has been inhibiting industrial development in such regions as the ECOWAS), and equally, these dependent nations function as the ‘repositories of surplus capital, outdated inventions, and finished products’ (Ferraro, 1996: 3). These roles routinely present dependent nations as mere appendages of the developed world. While capital and goods/services do flow into the economies of the dependent states, the utilization and allocation of such are determined by the existential interests of the dominant nations, and not by the extant needs of the dependent nations. A good reference is the economies of the Francophone West African countries, which are still largely regulated by France through the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA) (Adeniran, 2011; Rosero and Erten, 2010: 221–6). This scenario has been viewed as the basic platform for explicating prevalent poverty and related existential incongruence within the ECOWAS sub-region; moreover, it is argued that UEMOA functions as a contradiction of the ECOWAS. The notion of ‘comparative advantage’, which has always been the centrepiece of all developmental agenda ever facilitated by the West for Africa, such as the structural adjustment policy (SAP) in the mid-1980s, has been the most explicit depiction of this ensuing reality. Although the dependency perspective has affirmed that both economic and political powers are disproportionally concentrated in developed societies, a formidable distinction between such dependent affirmation and the imperialist standpoint is deemed imperative. While Marxism cleaves towards equating ‘state expansion’ with imperialistic tendency, the dependency framework tilts towards presenting ‘underdevelopment’ as the offshoot of such an expansionist agenda, especially in relation to developing societies. Put differently, while Marxism tends to espouse the precursors to imperialistic tendency, dependency analysis focuses on explaining the implications of such interactive output. For the dependency proponents, ‘underdevelopment’ emanates from this form of unequal interaction, which ultimately offers negligible prospects to any enduring development framework within a dependent or developing society.

Interestingly, this notion has been observed by some dependency scholars who do not even view capitalism as the precursor to an extant dependent relationship. Such relationship is adjudged to have been facilitated, ab initio, by a pattern of power relations. According to this view, the belief that dependency is associated with an unequal system of power relations, rather than with specific features of identifiable economic indices, might not always be tenable (Bah, 2011: 199–203).

Meanwhile, in respect of the prevalent scenario within the ECOWAS sub-region, both systems of power and capital accumulation seem relevant in the explanation of its relationships with the relatively adjudged ‘settled’ societies of the world.

Uncensored Cross-border Interaction and Regional Socio-economic Development in the ECOWAS Sub-region

Contextually, the nature of cross-border migration within West Africa could be situated across three epochs; that is, pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial. Meanwhile, a pre-colonial classification of related practices as intra-border or cross-border could be essentially improbable for obvious situational exigencies. For instance, the region could not hitherto be identified as a composition of independent nations (Nwosu, 2003: 1). Nevertheless, cross-border migration among the existing kingdoms was evident in the movement of natives who either participated in, or who were victims of slave capture and/or trade, inter-ethnic uprising and wars. The prevalent intra- and inter-tribal war in West Africa, especially during the 18th and 19th centuries, did cause massive migration across parts of the sub-region (Adeniran, 2009: 3676–8).

The advent of European colonialism at the tail end of 19th century did present a new interpretation of the phenomenon of cross-border migration within the West African sub-region. The policies and programmes of the colonial administration resulted in geographical and political demarcation of borders, and in the monetization of the economy. While the colonial economic policies within the emergent West African states encouraged migration from hinterland settlements to emerging urban locations, they indirectly discouraged cross-border interactions, especially along the Anglophone–Francophone dichotomy (Adeniran, 2009). This was basically due to conflicting intents of the British policy of association and the French policy of assimilation applied in respective countries within the sub-region. Yet, though ironically, such colonial creation could not stop the people from sustaining their pre-colonial socio-economic interactive patterns post-colonial rule. For instance, the case of the Ejigbo-Yoruba migrants from Anglophone Nigeria, who have found it easier to trade and settle in such a Francophone West African country as Cote d’Ivoire, despite extant colonial, linguistic and geographical impediments, is a good reference (Adeniran, 2010: 12–24).

A substantial number of Nigerian migrants has been reported in Cote d’Ivoire (approximate of 1,000,000) (Adeniran, 2010: 28) amongst other West African countries and vice versa. Specifically, the post independence, pro-immigration policies of late Ivorian President Felix Houphouet-Boigny were considered favourable to migrants from other West African countries – hence the increasing interest in migrating to Cote d’Ivoire (Adeniran, 2009). Of course, the migrants were treated as citizens, and not as foreigners within the Ivorian social space. Such regional migrants played notable roles in the building of the modern Ivorian nation. According to Kivisto and Faist (2010: 56), between gaining independence from France in 1960 and the first military coup in 1999, Cote d’Ivoire had been more stable than other countries in the region, with its export economy booming. As noted by De Bruijn, Van Dijk and Foeken, (2001), the country served as a natural attraction to other nationals within the West African sub-region. Such attraction has been based on long-standing ‘traditions of translocal and transnational networks of trade relations’ within the sub-region (Kivisto and Faist, 2010: 56).

Meanwhile, a prevalent point of discourse amongst the Ejigbo-Yoruba (Nigerian migrants) in Cote d’Ivoire presently is that situations are no longer as obtainable during President Houphouet-Boigny era. ² Existing in Cote d’Ivoire has become relatively difficult due to instability in governance (especially, as reflected under President Laurent Gbagbo’s regime). Indeed, the ideology of ‘Ivority’, which sought to integrate all West African immigrants into the socio-economic workings of the Ivorian society, has become obliterated.

Nevertheless, despite the related setback in mobility and migration practices amongst the people of West Africa, a recurring development is that boundaries between the peoples of the same or different culture (ethnic group) in different countries are routinely perceived by the people as unnatural (Asiwaju, 1992). They usually consider extant cross-border movement as taking place within the same socio-cultural space rather than between two different countries. The patterns of interaction around the Seme border, which separates Nigeria from Benin Republic, the Aflao border between Togo Republic and Ghana, and the Elubo/Noe border settlements between Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire are formidable references in this respect (Adeniran, 2010: 10).

Essentially, prevalent cross-border interaction along the Nigerian–Ivorian migratory corridor has presented a formidable prospect to inter-community development initiatives within the West African sub-region. Of greater significance in this regard is the impetus it portends for larger regional developmental drive. Aside from enhancement of individual and communal developmental possibility across the borders, subsisting cross-border contact routinely obliterates differences between cultures. Such cultural variations have included colonial cleavage, language barrier and differing institutional peculiarities. All along, cross-border transporters have been playing a remarkable role in sustaining a related pattern of interaction across the borders (Adeniran, 2011: 114). In the process, human and socio-economic development amongst member-states of the ECOWAS is being productively enabled.

Over the years, the ECOWAS Commission (that is, the authority that coordinates the day-to-day running of the ECOWAS) has been making notable attempts towards strengthening inter-community interactions within its regional framework on ‘free movement of persons and goods’ (ECOWAS, 2011: 2). For instance, the ECOWAS Treaty on ‘free movement of persons, residence and establishment’ (May, 1979) had aimed at creating a borderless West Africa, where unobstructed movement of individuals of West African descent, their expertise and commodities would be guaranteed. Specifically, Paragraph 2, sub-paragraph d, article 2 of the ECOWAS Treaty had enjoined all member-states to ensure a systemic ‘abolition of obstacles to free movement of persons, services and capital’ within the sub-region. Paragraph 1, article 27 of the ECOWAS Treaty actually confers a status of community citizens on all residents of ECOWAS countries (ECOWAS, 2000). Recently, the ECOWAS Commission, in conjunction with the World Bank’s Abidjan-Lagos Corridor Organization (ALCO), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) West Africa Trade Hub and other interested private sector partners, launched two Border Information Centres (BICs) along the Ghana–Togo border. All of these efforts are geared towards enhancing unhindered human movement and trading across West African borders (Braimah, 2011: 1–4). Integration within the sub-region, as being facilitated by the ECOWAS Commission, is purposively premised on productive enablement of cross-border movement among the sub-region’s estimated 300 million inhabitants (ECOWAS, 2011). Such a development would assist in fast tracking the process of regional social and economic development of West Africa. As noted by Somda (2011: 1–3), it will functionally enhance the positioning of the sub-region within larger global economic interaction.

The ECOWAS Monitoring and Evaluation system (2011) has sought to develop a common understanding among all stakeholders in the process of executing priority activities ingrained in the regional strategic plan of action. Inferring from the ECOWAS fundamental principle of free movement of persons and goods, the regional strategic plan of action has identified six priority areas for the region from 2011 to 2015: that is, peace, security and good governance; cooperation and development; competition and fairness; economic and monetary integration; institutional capacity building; and international prospects (ECOWAS, 2011: 1). As potent as the detail of this plan of action is, a notable misplacement has been the inability of the ECOWAS to actually domesticate the agenda. Most prominent global interests, such as the European Union (EU), the United States (US), China and so forth, are being represented within the frameworks of the plan; hence, it might not be able to address any extant developmental challenge within the sub-region.

Transnational Simultaneity: A Home-grown Socio-economic Framework in West Africa

In the view of Adeniran (2011: 132), the functionality of ‘transnational simultaneity’, as being engaged by the Ejigbo-Yoruba migrants along the Nigerian–Ivorian migratory corridor, seems to present a veritable platform for fast tracking the process of regional integration and actual development of the West African sub-region. Such extent of utilization, whereby individual migrants would identify with the host society and are still in touch with their home country, has become relevant in view of the ongoing intent of the ECOWAS Commission to transmute the sub-region from ‘an ECOWAS of States to an ECOWAS of People’ (ECOWAS, 2011: 2–3), where it would be possible to assess what is happening to the people directly rather than through the state.

Indeed, most of the integrative and developmental goals of the ECOWAS authorities, which have seemed improbable, are being attained at a rather informal level as enabled by the culture of ‘transnational simultaneity’ within the sub-region. For instance, among the relatively older, returnee-indigenes of Ejigbo-Yoruba community in Nigeria (that is, those who are at least 70 years old), their retirement or relocation from Cote d’Ivoire has not stopped them from going back to the country intermittently by road despite the distance and the risky nature of such trips, especially for the elderly. Why? First, their existence is still largely tied to Cote d’Ivoire. They go there to collect rents on their houses, shops and other business ventures (often managed by their Ivorian spouses or children or relatives whom they took there ab initio). Some even go there to collect their retirement benefits and/or pensions from the Ivorian government, though they are Nigerian nationals. ³

Second, they go to visit their Ivorian friends whom they had come across in the course of their sojourn in Cote d’Ivoire, especially those, who, one way or the other, facilitated the path of their existence while in the country. For instance, they may have helped in the process of acquiring Ivorian residence permit, right of stay or citizenship, getting jobs and/or contracts, securing lands and/or property, marrying indigenes and of course, in acquiring local spiritual power. ⁴

I am on my way to collect rent on my house and shops in Abobo-Abidjan (Cote d’Ivoire) so that I could complete my house in Ejigbo (Nigeria)…. I also want to do my annual pension verification … to visit my family and my old friend at Bouake (an Ivorian region) to renew my ‘gbetugbetu’ (traditional spiritual power) which he gave me while we were working together in Abidjan. ⁵

Inferring from the text of the in-depth interview above, it is conspicuous that the respondent, as applicable to others in his shoes, still has arrays of reasons for sustaining his contact with the Ivorian society, from economic considerations to family considerations and, interestingly, ‘spiritual’ considerations. A conspicuous end product of all these interactions is the enhancement of the possibility of socio-economic integration and development within the ECOWAS sub-region, though in a rather inverse pattern.

Generally, the nature of the Ejigbo-Yoruba’s interactions with the Ivorian society has prominently caused Nigerian and Ivorian societies to become somewhat interdependent over time and space. At the level of socio-economic interaction, the Ivorian CFA has been a popular legal tender in Ejigbo, Nigeria and of course, exchanged with the Nigerian Naira in most households in the settlement. Reciprocally, this has been the situation with the Nigerian Naira in relation to the Ivorian CFA in most Nigerian households in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire. Essentially, as many Ivorian commodities are retailed in Ejigbo, Nigeria, so also, identifiable local Nigerian commodities or items are sold in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire.

While the Ejigbo-Yoruba have often tended to replicate most of the Nigerian cultural peculiarities as a group in Abidjan, there still subsists a remarkable departure from the ideal. The Ivorian society has actually left a footprint on their cultural inclination. As a consequence, a new existential pattern, definitely not wholly Ivorian or wholly Nigerian (possibly, ECOWAS) has emerged amidst the people. The speaking pattern of the people has been largely distorted; some colloquial Abidjan French (Ivorian language) is appearing in Yoruba (Nigerian language), and vice versa. ⁶ Ostensibly, prevalent cross-cultural intermarriage between the Nigerian immigrants and their Ivorian hosts has been a formidable factor.

Significantly, however, a feasible end product of related interactions as being played out along the Nigerian–Ivorian migratory corridor is the emergence of a home-grown integrative and developmental platform for the ECOWAS sub-region; that is, the culture of ‘transnational simultaneity’.

Specific Findings from the Study

The following findings have been derived from the study:

Concluding Comments

Of all hindrances standing on the path of facilitating a home-grown framework for socio-economic development of West Africa, improper implementation of the ECOWAS protocol on free movement of persons and goods by the member-states has remained the most problematic. Meanwhile, even in situations where free movement is allowed, processing of documents for trade or residence purpose has routinely proved Herculean for the region’s citizens. Notably, undue attachment and reliance on former regional colonial powers and other global powers has continued to be implicated in this respect (Adeniran, 2011).

In addition, the persistent high-handedness and corruption of border officials within the ECOWAS sub-region have been hampering most cross-border efforts targeted at regional integration and development by individuals and institutions. As shown in a transnational investigation by Adeniran (2010: 12), approximately 85 percent of security and border post officials between Lagos, Nigeria and Noe, Cote d’Ivoire forcefully solicit bribes from travellers, even when all required travel documents are intact.

Interestingly however, as a result of prevalent culture of ‘transnational simultaneity’ within the West African sub-region, tangible efforts are being geared towards households and community development across the borders despite subsisting hindrances. For instance, the Ejigbo-Yoruba migrants in Cote d’Ivoire have been contributing towards individual and communal projects in both Nigeria (their country of departure) and Cote d’Ivoire (their country of destination) through the practice of ‘transnational simultaneity’.

In all, extant exchanges amongst individuals on both sides of the migratory corridor (that is, Cote d’Ivoire and Nigeria) for personal and community development initiatives present potent promises to the larger ECOWAS regional integration and development, if well harnessed.