Economic community of West African states: From an Economic Union to a peacekeeping mission?

The peripheralization of African states within the global economic system has created hardship for a majority of the citizens in the African continent. The realization of this fact and its impact on political stability in the region prompted lawmakers to pursue strategies that might mollify and reverse the trend toward economic marginalization. In Francophone and Anglophone Africa attempts were made to establish economic unions. In West Africa, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was born on May 28, 1975 to, among other things, tackle the intractable economic problems confronting the region. Despite the group's concerted efforts so far, its record has not been promising. Today, it is within this framework that under the leadership of Nigeria, a regional hegemony, ECOWAS is involved in a peacekeeping mission as a result of civil wars in the area. This article contends that economic revitalization and prosperity is imperative for peace and stability. Indeed, it is only when the ECOWAS pursue vigorously the tenets of its treaty within the context of liberalization and democracy that the area might be spared of the crisis that engulfed Liberia and now rages in Sierra Leone.