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Accueil > InterAfriques : Coopération transfrontalière et intégration ouest africaine
(fr) 

Presentation

In West Africa, regional integration is unanimously perceived as a lever through which the region could not only accelerate growth but furthermore create the conditions for peace thanks to adaptive management of, for example, natural resources (such as water, forests, energy and soils) or migration dynamics.

Still, despite the efforts devoted to the establishment and fulfilment of regional institutions such as the ECOWAS and UEMOA, the process of West African integration has difficulties to make tangible progress. In the border areas, the communaitarian clauses aiming at the facilitation of the free movement of persons and goods and people are, in reality, far from being realised. The added value of the commercial trade flows, which is to a significant extent in hands of the informal sector, is continuously restrained by (semi) official taxations of customs and police officers, the degradation of routs, situations of insecurity, the under-equipment of markets, etc.

Based on the simple assessments of the facts, Enda Diapol got convinced that beyond the progress at institutional level, regional integration can only be succesfull when the people are involved. In that perspective, the promotion of cross border cooperation appears to be a veritable motor for regional integration (as it is the case in Europe), which puts the « national peripheries at the centre of the integration process ».


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