Regional Economic Integration in West Africa and Cocoa Beans Value Chain in Nigeria

The regional platforms put in place by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) are supposed to be able to proffer solutions to some of the challenges of the cocoa beans value chain in Nigeria. These challenges, inter alia, are low value addition and consequently low productivity these hamper the performance of the cocoa beans value chain in Nigeria a value chain regarded as strategic according to the Agricultural Transformation Agenda of Nigeria in 2010. In economic literature, inter -linkages amongst related or same industries are important for value addition which in turn is essential for maximising income gains and improving general living standards of all actors engaged in the entire production and trade processes in a value chain. The New Trade Theory explicates how intra-industry/intra-regional trade can give rise to the fragmentation of production processes that characterise value chains and how intra-regional trade can foster the needed value addition in a value chain. This current study is motivated by the need to assess the extent to which the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has fostered the performance of the cocoa beans value chain in Nigeria by creating the necessary forward and backward linkages between actors in the cocoa beans value chain in Nigeria and the rest of ECOWAS. The findings from descriptive statistics seem to suggest a weak performance on the part of ECOWAS thus calling for the need for intensified regional efforts to sufficiently bolster the performance of the cocoa beans value chain in Nigeria.