‘With $166bn exports, W/Africa must industrialise or be left behind’

West African leaders, diplomats, and business executives gathered in Abuja for the first-ever West Africa Economic Summit (WAES), where President Bola Ahmed Tinubu issued a stern warning: the region must industrialise and integrate its economies — or risk being left behind. Launching the summit with a bold call to action, President Tinubu, who also chairs […]

West African leaders, diplomats, and business executives gathered in Abuja for the first-ever West Africa Economic Summit (WAES), where President Bola Ahmed Tinubu issued a stern warning: the region must industrialise and integrate its economies — or risk being left behind.

Launching the summit with a bold call to action, President Tinubu, who also chairs the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government, declared that West Africa can no longer afford to remain on the margins of global trade.

“Africa was left behind in previous industrial revolutions. We cannot afford to miss the next one,” he said, urging his fellow leaders to turn the continent’s raw material wealth into real economic value through regional manufacturing and innovation.

“Opportunity is not destiny,” Tinubu told delegates at the International Conference Centre, Abuja.

“We must earn it through vision, integration, policy coherence, collaboration, and capital alignment.”

His speech underscored the urgency of reforming trade patterns, unlocking infrastructure, and investing in youth and digital innovation.

President Tinubu criticised West Africa’s overreliance on external trade partners, saying the region must stop “competing in isolation.”

He called for collective capital mobilisation, regional policy coherence, and joint project execution, arguing that fragmented efforts are stalling economic progress. “We must act as a bloc—or remain irrelevant,” he warned.

Despite a combined population of over 400 million and abundant resources, intra-regional trade in West Africa remains under 10 per cent — a number Tinubu called “a coordination failure.”

He challenged the region to stop competing in silos and instead align its policies and infrastructure to build integrated supply chains, starting with major projects like the Lagos-Abidjan Highway and the West African Power Pool.

But perhaps the most striking part of the day came with a keynote from Engr. Abisoye Coker-Odusote, Director-General of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), who linked regional trade to an unlikely enabler: digital identity.

Coker-Odusote revealed that Nigeria’s rapid rise in digital ID enrolment is driven by gender-sensitive outreach, mobile kits in remote areas, and decentralised partnerships.

She said this model could help close identity gaps across ECOWAS, particularly for women and rural communities, ensuring no group is excluded from regional economic integration.

According to Coker-Odusote, trade in West Africa cannot flourish until citizens are digitally identifiable across borders.

“A unified digital identity system is an economic and developmental imperative,” she said, arguing that seamless trade, financial access, and cross-border services depend on reliable, interoperable ID systems.

“Digital identity strengthens trade by making the informal visible, reducing fraud, and enabling access to services across national boundaries.”

With Nigeria now enrolling over 120 million citizens under its National Identification Number (NIN) system, the NIMC boss said the country is well-positioned to support a regional framework.

Ghana, Senegal, and Côte d’Ivoire are also making progress, while others — including Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone — still lag behind. The lack of harmonisation, she warned, weakens mobility, trust, and the scalability of cross-border trade platforms.

Coker-Odusote outlined a five-point roadmap for harmonising digital identity in the region.

She called on governments to treat ID systems as critical infrastructure; identity agencies to align on standards; ECOWAS to institutionalise digital ID through charters and working groups; the private sector to embed ID verification in services; and civil society to drive grassroots awareness, especially among women and rural dwellers.

Her remarks found strong support among private-sector stakeholders in attendance, especially fintech firms and logistics companies who often struggle with identity verification across markets.

She linked digital identity to financial inclusion, arguing that it reduces KYC costs and expands access to credit, remittances, and mobile payments for small businesses.

In a similarly impassioned address, Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, drew from history to make the case for deeper economic integration.

“Long before this city was founded, the people of this region traded — not through treaties, but through brotherhood and trust,” he said, recalling ancient markets in Katsina, Salaga, and Kano.

“Markets are a West African story.”

But he didn’t sugar-coat the challenges. In 2024, West Africa exported goods valued at over $166 billion — yet only 8.6 per cent of those exports stayed within the region. Imports remain heavily skewed toward non-African partners, especially China, India, the US, and the EU.

“This trajectory is untenable,” Tuggar said, adding, “The issue is not just capacity, but orientation.” He called on governments to simplify bureaucracy, modernise customs frameworks, and embrace the informal sector, which he described as agile and essential to regional growth.

The summit, according to Tuggar, was not meant to produce another glossy declaration. “There is literally a deal room at this summit,” he said. “We are not here to tell the private sector its business — but to give you the space to grow. Use it!”

All three key speakers — Tinubu, Coker-Odusote, and Tuggar — agreed that the region’s youthful population could be a game-changer or a ticking time bomb. More than 60 per cent of West Africa is under the age of 25, yet youth unemployment and undereducation persist.

The consensus was clear: prosperity will only come if West Africa invests aggressively in education, digital infrastructure, and enterprise.

“Our prosperity depends on regional supply chains, energy networks, and data frameworks,” Tinubu said. “We must design them together — or they will collapse separately.”

The inaugural WAES was not just a meeting of governments but a test of the region’s resolve. For once, the message was unambiguous: West Africa must industrialise, digitise, and integrate — or risk losing another generation to underdevelopment.

“We must move from declarations to concrete deals.

“Let us build a West Africa that is investable, competitive, and resilient, one that leads with vision, responsibility, and unity,” Tinubu urged.