Abstract
Regional integration is vital for the building of markets, the creation of robust and diverse economies as well as increasing opportunities for growth and attracting investment finance. It is the outcome of cooperative arrangement and processes, the implementation of intergovernmental treaties and market-led processes, which produces the platform for economies in a region to become more closely interconnected (African Development Bank 2010). Studies have shown that more than half of total trade worldwide takes place through regional trade blocs and figures show that trade under this system grew from 43 % to 60 % between 2001 and 2005 (OECD 2005). In order to achieve the laudable objectives of regional integration, transportation development and coordination has a vital role to play as a formidable force for catalyzing intra-regional trade among member states. As a vital component of investment climate, it provides market access to people and goods, thereby reducing cost of doing business.
Against this background, the poor and inadequate state of transportation network in West Africa undermines the rapid progress of its regional development initiatives. Some of the problems being faced by the transportation sector in West Africa are: poor linkages among transport modes in West Africa which causes long delays and raise costs of doing business; landlocked countries are not well connected to the regional transportation networks; and inefficiency of transport services due to protected transportation market. This partly explains why intra-West African trade stands at less than 10 % of its regional GDP. In view of this, this study discusses the evolution of the four transport modes – ports, roads, airports and railways – but focuses more on roads as the most important mode of transportation in the region. Finally, while adopting both quantitative and qualitative analytical approaches, this article presents a transportation development and coordination model for West Africa and also proposes the policy options to be adopted in order to optimize transportation for regional integration in West Africa.
A different variant of this article entitled ‘Infrastructure Development and Intra-Regional Trade: A Case of ECOWAS’ was published in the Journal of West Africa Integration (JWAI). These two versions are different because the version in JWAI was based on gravity model.
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- 1.
Other sub-regional blocs within the ECOWAS include the Mano River Union (MRU), the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA), West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ) and the Community of Sahel-Saharan States (CEN-SAD) to which some of the ECOWAS members belong.
- 2.
All maps in this chapter were developed with data from the Data Resource Centre, University of Guelph and developed by Dr. Gift Dumedah (McMaster University).
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Acknowledgements
We thank ECOWAS-EPAU for providing the funding for this study. We also appreciate the contributions of Glen Filson, Carlyle Farrell, Caiphas Chekwoti, Diery Seck, Ciliaka Gitau, and Gift Dumedah.
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Appendix: Major Corridors in ECOWAS
Appendix: Major Corridors in ECOWAS
A map showing the major corridors in ECOWAS (Source AICD 2010)
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Deen-Swarray, M., Adekunle, B., Odularu, G. (2014). Policy Recipe for Fostering Regional Integration Through Infrastructure Development and Coordination in West Africa. In: Seck, D. (eds) Regional Economic Integration in West Africa. Advances in African Economic, Social and Political Development. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01282-7_2
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