West African bloc pins hopes on ambitious superhighway from Ivory Coast to Nigeria

West African leaders are holding a crucial summit in Nigeria’s capital Abuja, focusing on the morale-sapping departure of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger from their 15-member bloc Ecowas.
Few think the military rulers of the three dissident states can be persuaded to pause or reverse their decision.
While faced with this blow to regional unity, West Africa is also poised to start work on a 1,028km (689 miles) highway from Ivory Coast’s main city Abidjan – through Ghana, Togo and Benin – to Nigeria’s biggest city Lagos.
Construction is supposed to start in 2026 and pledges of $15.6bn (£12.3bn) have already been mobilised from a range of funders and investors.
Just as Western Europe matched the Soviet-led communist bloc with a “Common Market” that later evolved into today’s trading powerhouse, the European Union (EU), so Ecowas may find that a drive for prosperity and growth proves to be its most effective response to the wave of military coups and nationalism that have swept across the region since 2020.
The plan to build a modern transport corridor along the West African coast was originally approved eight years ago – long before the coups that have overturned civilian rule in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
Preparatory studies, led by the African Development Bank, were commissioned.
But when these were presented last month, the timing could hardly have come at a better moment for reinvigorating the battered self-confidence of Ecowas (Economic Community of West African States).
Neither traditional diplomacy, nor sanctions, nor even the threat of military intervention in Niger, had managed to push the juntas into organising elections and restoring civilian government, as required by Ecowas governance rules.
The defiant regimes declared they would leave the 15-member bloc altogether.
They have subsequently spurned the remaining members’ efforts to persuade them to stay, although the Ecowas envoy, Senegal’s new, young President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who shares their nationalistic outlook, is still trying.
Until this crisis, Ecowas was Africa’s most cohesive and politically integrated regional grouping, with a creditable record of crisis management and even the deployment of peacekeepers in troubled member states.
With the departure of Mali, Burkina and Niger, the bloc will lose 76 million of its 446 million people and more than half its total geographical land area, with the loss of vast tracts of the Sahara – a painful blow to prestige and self-belief.