Policy Recipe for Fostering Regional Integration Through Infrastructure Development and Coordination in West Africa

Mariama Deen-Swarray (), Bamidele Adekunle () and Gbadebo Odularu ()
Additional contact information
Mariama Deen-Swarray: Research ICT Africa
Bamidele Adekunle: University of Guelph
Gbadebo Odularu: Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA)

A chapter in Regional Economic Integration in West Africa, 2014, pp 29-56 from Springer

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Regional integration; Infrastructure; ECOWAS; Policy coordination and coherence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:aaechp:978-3-319-01282-7_2

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783319012827

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-01282-7_2

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Advances in African Economic, Social and Political Development from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().