Nation States and Regional Integration

(PANA)—UNESCO and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) are organising a seminar for 24-26 September in Praia, Cape Verde on the theme “Nation-states and the challenges of regional integration in West Africa”.

This seminar, organised in partnership with the Cape Verde Foreign Ministry and the Amílcar Cabral Foundation, is part of a vast research project launched in 2005 under the auspices of the United Nations Management of Social Transformations programme (UNESCO’s MOST programme).

Cape Verde Minister of the Economy, Competitiveness and Growth, José Brito will open the seminar where Pierre Sané, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Social and Human Sciences will be in attendance.

An initial seminar that was held in Praia last April examined the specificity of the Cape Verde archipelago within West African economic cooperation.

The upcoming seminar will bring together more than 100 people, including specialists in the social and human sciences and directors of regional integration in the ministries responsible for the issue in the 15 ECOWAS member states.

Those directors will make a progress report on the MOST programme three months ahead of the next meeting of ECOWAS heads of state.

This UNESCO project explores the reasons for the slow progress of a process, which is essential to lift West African countries out of their ‘maldevelopment’.

Since its launch, the cases of 10 of the 15 ECOWAS member states have been analysed at national seminars in Benin (8-9 October 2005), Ghana (8-9 November 2005), Mali (14-15 November 2005), Burkina Faso (21-22 November 2005), Gambia (22-23 December 2005), Niger (18-19 October 2006), Togo (22-23 August 2006), Senegal (13-14 September 2006), Cape Verde (4-5 April 2007) and in Guinea (30-31 May 2007).

Each of these meetings had provided an opportunity to gather around the same table - often for the first time - scientists, political decision-makers and those involved in economic and social development with the support of several international organizations involved in social development in Africa (the African Capacity Building Foundation, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and Trust Africa).

Every meeting leads to the publication of a book by the Karthala publishing house. The books on Benin, Mali, Senegal and Niger will be available at the Praia meeting, a UNESCO release said.

Five national seminars are still to be held (Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Guinea Bissau) before an international conference is organised in Autumn 2008 to produce a draft of proposals on regional integration for submission to the ECOWAS Heads of State.

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