The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Parliament has thrown its weight behind a sweeping push to harmonise customs procedures, import regulations, taxation policies and business registration requirements across the 15-member bloc, arguing that a patchwork of conflicting national rules is choking the growth of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs).
The resolution was adopted at the close of a week-long delocalised meeting of the Parliament’s Joint Committee on Industry and Private Sector, Macroeconomic Policy and Economic Research, Administration, Finance and Budget, and Public Accounts, held under the theme “Empowering MSMEs as Formal Drivers of ECOWAS Regional Value Chains.”
Co-Chairman of the Joint Committee, Hon. Alhagie Darbo, told delegates that member states must move beyond rhetoric and fully implement existing ECOWAS trade and investment protocols, eliminate lingering non-tariff barriers, invest in trade-supporting infrastructure and strengthen national monitoring mechanisms if the bloc is serious about building a predictable, business-friendly environment for small enterprises.
The urgency behind the resolution was underscored earlier in the week when ECOWAS officials warned that roughly 90 percent of West Africa’s economy still operates in the informal sector as a statistic lawmakers say illustrates just how far the region remains from the seamless single market envisioned when the bloc was founded in 1975.
Parliamentarians described formalising MSMEs as central not only to economic transformation but to reducing poverty and addressing insecurity across the sub-region.
That gap between policy and practice was laid bare during a field visit and town hall session the Parliament held in Cotonou, where traders and manufacturers aired long-standing grievances.
At a pineapple juice processing factory, the owner told visiting lawmakers that shipping her products to neighbouring West African countries had become harder than exporting to Europe as a complaint that echoed similar accounts from women traders who described harassment and demands for unofficial payments at border crossings.
Despite decades of initiatives such as the ECOWAS Trade Liberalisation Scheme and protocols guaranteeing free movement of people and goods, businesses continue to report multiple checkpoints, inconsistent customs enforcement, informal levies and lengthy delays at borders the obstacles that fall hardest on small and micro enterprises, which typically lack the resources or legal expertise to navigate overlapping national regulations.
Beyond the call for harmonisation, lawmakers directed the ECOWAS Commission to:
– Strengthen implementation of the ECOWAS MSME Development Policy (2021 to“2030) through enterprise support centres, business support programmes, entrepreneurship initiatives and digital skills training;
– Establish export support mechanisms along major trade corridors and strategic border posts to guide exporters, ease compliance with trade requirements and cut administrative bottlenecks;
– Accelerate harmonisation of ECOWAS product standards, certification and quality assurance systems, so goods can move across borders without repeated re-testing or re-certification;
– Expand access to affordable finance for MSMEs, which lawmakers identified as a persistent bottleneck preventing informal traders from scaling up and formalising their operations.
The resolution reflects growing frustration within the regional legislature that the problem in West Africa is not a shortage of good policy but a failure of implementation.
Officials from the ECOWAS Commission’s Business Council Secretariat, presenting alongside lawmakers in Cotonou, argued that the bloc already possesses strong legal instruments for private sector development, including an MSME Charter, but that national governments have been slow to translate them into enforceable domestic law.
For now, the ECOWAS Parliament’s resolutions are recommendations rather than binding law — they must still be forwarded to the ECOWAS Commission and national governments for adoption.
But lawmakers have signalled they intend to keep pressing capitals to act, framing the reforms as essential not just for entrepreneurs, but for the bloc’s broader ambitions of deeper regional economic integration and a stronger negotiating position within the African Continental Free Trade Area.
Whether the latest round of resolutions fares better than earlier reform pledges will depend, as it long has in the sub-region, on the political will of ECOWAS’s fifteen member states to enforce at home what they agree to in Cotonou.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
ECOWAS has the right policies on paper the real crisis is enforcement. Harmonising customs, taxes, and business registration across West Africa isn’t a new idea; what’s new is lawmakers admitting that decades of good protocols have failed MSMEs because member states never enforced them at home.
Until that changes, small traders will keep paying bribes at borders and losing markets to bureaucracy, no matter how many resolutions get signed in Cotonou.
