Fifteen Years of WAEMU: Results and Strategies for the Future

Abstract

After 15 years of existence, WAEMU has recorded some undeniable successes, particularly in its currency management, its exchange policy and in the organisation of its stock market. It has also managed to preserve the solidity and reliability of its institutions and its members’ adhesion to the community project. However, although there continues to be respect for its neutrality, independence and authority, it is facing difficulties improving in other areas that are, certainly, new to its scope of responsibilities. WAEMU is one of the most disadvantaged community areas in the world in terms of human development, and according to UNDP human development index (HDI) its ranking continues to regress. Furthermore, the growing economic divergence between the richest and the poorest countries highlights the failure of national policies in individual countries and the Union’s inability to help these countries in a significant manner within the current framework, which is an element that could threaten cohesion.

The significant improvements that one can expect of the Union are not in the monetary arena, where it has managed to preserve and strengthen the gains from the West African Monetary Union (WAMU) that preceded it, but rather they are in those areas that continue to fall under national competence. There are four kinds of priority strategic actions that emerged from the analysis of WAEMA’s institutional and programming results. First, WAEMU’s economic and social—and therefore budgetary—policy competence should be broadened beyond monetary issues, and the states should envision conceding part of their sovereignty, which would strengthen the Union’s ability to exploit its full potential. Increasing the Commission’s revenues would make it easier to implement community projects that have been suspended or abandoned due to a lack of funding.

Secondly, the Union should focus on strengthening the weakest countries, both to improve the social situation of residents of those countries and to facilitate the equalisation process, which is key to all community projects. Thirdly, the Union should enact a social pact whose main goal would be to improve the standard of living of all its residents. Implementing the social pact would occur at the community level, under the Commission’s overall authority and adequate financing. The fourth strategic priority would consist of increasing mobility within the Union to remove non-tariff barriers and untimely roadblocks, of encouraging the development of cross-national value chains within the Union and of reinforcing the creation of infrastructures that promote mobility.