ECOWAS at 50: Explaining Colonial State as an Enduring Debacle to Regionalism in West Africa

Former colonial rulers or post-war border agreements between major powers frequently produced monstrosities in which linguistic, religious, or ethnic groups were arbitrarily divided or thrown together without taking into account their unique characteristics and goals. It is of great concern that a larger percentage of African borders did not follow longitudinal and latitudinal lines. Political, economic, and social tragedies in Africa are largely caused by these colonial borders, which either divided the same people into neighbouring countries or created ethnically divided nations. In particular, most African states were built along colonial borders, except for a few, such as Ethiopia and Egypt. Therefore, the numerous issues that states in the ECOWAS sub-region face, though complex, are addressed through regional integration. The assumption behind this conclusion is that ECOWAS has not done much to meet its primary goals. This paper investigated the challenges of colonial borders (artificiality of state borders) to regionalism in the ECOWAS subregion, even as it attains the golden age of 50 years. The objective of this paper was to ascertain how regionalism in West Africa is affected by colonial borders, a tendency in which political borders do not align with the natural divisions of ethnic nationalities. The paper adopted descriptive and analytical methodology by making use of information from secondary sources. It found that ECOWAS has not succeeded in achieving core aspects of its mission objectives 50 years after its establishment because of colonial borders. It is, therefore, recommended that whereas it is appropriate for African integration initiatives to rely on sister integration initiatives like the European Union (EU), more African intrusiveness is necessary.