By: Bolade Adeyemi
In an atmosphere charged with both urgency and optimism, the West Africa Economic Summit 2025 convened on Saturday, June 21, at the International Conference Centre in Abuja. It was not just another diplomatic assembly, but a defining moment where presidents, ministers, technocrats, and private sector leaders converged to grapple with the region’s persistent economic challenges and chart a bold course toward a more resilient, competitive, and inclusive West Africa.
Held under the theme of realistic solutions for regional progress, the summit brought together the continent’s most influential actors to speak candidly about the paradoxes plaguing the region: abundant resources but poor productivity, vibrant populations but inadequate infrastructure, rich histories but fragmented markets. The recurring message was clear — the time for rhetoric has passed; the time for implementation is now.
Delivering the opening address, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and Chairperson of the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government, wasted no time in setting the tone. With characteristic clarity, he called on leaders to abandon half-measures and embrace a transformative regional agenda. “West Africa is one of the last great frontiers of economic growth,” he declared. “Yet opportunity alone does not guarantee transformation. Opportunity is not destiny. We must earn it through vision, integration, policy coherence, collaboration, and capital alignment.”
President Tinubu lamented the region’s chronically low level of intra-regional trade — less than 10 per cent — which he described as a “coordination failure” rather than a lack of ambition. He challenged the community of nations to break the cycle of isolation and external dependence by fostering deeper integration. “The global economy will not wait for West Africa to get its act together,” he warned. “Rather than competing in isolation or relying on external partners, we must strengthen our regional value chains, invest in infrastructure, and coordinate our policies.”
He pointed to Nigeria’s investments in youth empowerment, digital connectivity, and education as steps in the right direction, but emphasized that the real key to progress lies in collective regional action. “No one country can do this alone,” he stressed. “Our prosperity depends on regional supply chains, energy networks, and data frameworks. We must design them together — or they will collapse separately.”
Referencing joint infrastructure projects like the Lagos-Abidjan highway and the West African Power Pool, Tinubu urged that such regional collaborations must move beyond paper promises to measurable outcomes. “We must move from declarations to concrete deals; from policy frameworks to practical implementation,” he stated. “Let us emerge from this summit with actionable outcomes: a renewed commitment to ease of doing business, enhanced intra-regional trade, improved infrastructure connectivity, and innovative ideas that move our people from poverty to prosperity.”
Tinubu was particularly passionate about the need to rethink the region’s role in global value chains. “Africa was left behind in previous industrial revolutions,” he said. “We cannot afford to miss the next one. Our rare minerals power tomorrow’s green technologies — yet it is not enough to be resource-rich; we must become value-chain smart.” He made a strong case for local processing, regional manufacturing, and innovation-driven entrepreneurship. “The era of pit to port must end. We must turn our mineral wealth into domestic economic value — jobs, technology, and manufacturing,” he declared.
The keynote address, titled “Digital Identity and Trade in West Africa,” was delivered by Engr. (Dr.) Abisoye Coker-Odusote, Director-General and CEO of Nigeria’s National Identity Management Commission (NIMC). Her presentation illuminated the often-overlooked infrastructure of economic development: identity.
Coker-Odusote began by asserting that West Africa’s economic vibrancy remains stifled by the invisibility of its informal sector and the lack of a unified identity framework. While ECOWAS data reports intra-regional trade at 10–15 per cent, she suggested that if informal trade were properly accounted for, the figure would be significantly higher. “Our markets are bustling, our people are trading, but our systems are not speaking to each other,” she observed.
She described digital identity not just as a technical tool, but as a fundamental economic enabler. “When citizens can move across borders with a recognised and verifiable identity, they can trade, access services, establish trust in new markets, and participate meaningfully in regional growth,” she said. “Digital identity strengthens trade by making the informal visible, reducing fraud, and enabling access to financial services, logistics, and government programs across national boundaries.”
Highlighting Nigeria’s enrolment of over 120 million citizens under the National Identification Number (NIN) scheme, Coker-Odusote cited recent technological upgrades and decentralisation strategies that have made the system more inclusive and efficient. She noted similar progress in Ghana, Senegal, and Côte d’Ivoire, where biometric systems have been integrated into national development programs. But she also acknowledged that countries like Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone continued to face significant gaps in coverage and system interoperability.
These discrepancies, she argued, represent more than just technical issues; they are barriers to economic inclusion, financial access, and cross-border trust. A harmonised digital identity system, she said, would reduce the cost of Know Your Customer (KYC) processes, facilitate digital wallets, and open up formal markets to micro and small enterprises that are often locked out.
“By building regional identity systems that are secure, inclusive, and interoperable, West Africa can leapfrog traditional barriers and construct a trade ecosystem where opportunity is borderless, prosperity is shared, and dignity is digitally guaranteed,” she asserted. She called on governments to treat digital identity as core infrastructure — as essential as roads or electricity — and to embed it in trade, financial, and migration policies.
In a poignant call to action, she concluded, “When underserved grassroots communities, especially women, youth, and informal traders, are empowered with secure digital identities, they are not just being counted; they are being connected to opportunity.”
Adding a historical and philosophical dimension to the day’s discussions was Ambassador Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Chair of the ECOWAS Council of Ministers. In his remarks, Tuggar invited the audience to reflect on the region’s precolonial past, when trade flourished through trust, kinship, and interdependence. “Before independence movements and colonial cartography, the people of this region related and traded — not through treaties, but through brotherhood and trust,” he recalled.
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He evoked images of ancient trade centers — Salaga, Katsina, Kano — to remind delegates that markets are woven into the cultural fabric of West Africa. “Markets are a West African story, a story about trade, innovation and the generation of wealth and opportunity,” he said. But he also underscored the painful reality that despite exporting over $166 billion worth of goods in 2024, only 8.6 per cent of that trade occurred within the region. Imports, he noted, are heavily dominated by manufactured goods from external partners, while West Africa continues to export raw materials in unprocessed form.
Tuggar was unequivocal in his critique of the current economic orientation. “This trajectory is untenable — and the issue is not just capacity, but orientation,” he said. He warned that if West Africa does not change the way it conceptualises trade, the region would continue to be locked out of global value chains and perpetually dependent on others for manufactured goods and technology.
Yet, he struck a hopeful note as well. He pointed to the informal sector’s resilience and the region’s vibrant entrepreneurial culture. He called for systems that make it easier for informal trade to transition into the formal economy, gaining access to credit, insurance, and international markets. “Let’s stop outsourcing the future and take back control of our destiny,” he urged.
He emphasized that the time has come for West Africa to become a producer of ideas and a host of investment — not merely a participant in summits held in distant global capitals. “We want this summit to show that West Africa can deliver the space where government, industry and other stakeholders can meet and make deals,” he said. “We are not here to tell the private sector its business – but to give you the space to grow. Use it!”
The highlight of the summit was the introduction of a dedicated “deal room”, a concrete space for transforming speeches into signed agreements and ideas into investment portfolios. This innovation signalled a shift in the summit’s tone — away from symbolic statements and toward measurable results.
The West Africa Economic Summit 2025 was not simply an event — it was a turning point. It was a moment of collective reckoning, but also of profound possibility. Across speeches and sessions, the central theme remained: West Africa must harness its own potential — and must do so together.
The days ahead will determine whether the declarations made in Abuja translate into real policy shifts and regional cooperation. But if the tone of this summit is anything to go by, then West Africa may finally be ready to take control of its narrative, its resources, and its future.
As Coker-Odusote reminded everyone, “The time to act is now.” West Africa has spoken. The world is watching. And the future, at last, is calling.
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