Regional Integration

The Lagos-Abidjan corridor is embedded within the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). ECOWAS promotes the free circulation of people and goods within its fifteen member countries. The maintenance and development of the corridor road is one of the largest infrastructure projects in ECOWAS and part of a wider trend of promoting regional integration in West Africa. There are concerted inter-governmental efforts to maintain good road surfaces and increase the fluidity of persons and goods along the corridor to boost the West African economy. Governance bodies are very aware that on a regional level, 75% of the economic activities occur along the corridor.

The World Bank, African Development Bank, German Development Agency and Japanese Development Agency are all funding improvements to accelerate the integration and growth of regional exchanges, reduce obstacles and barriers in the ports, rationalise the borders, and lower the cost of trade by reducing the cost of transport. The aim here is that goods flow quickly and unhampered out of the ports and from point to point. However while ECOWAS promotes the free circulation of people and goods along the corridor, on the ground it is often disjointed by national borders, customs officers, police and traffic checkpoints.

The Organisation of the Abidjan-Lagos Corridor was founded with US funds from the Millennium Challenge and its original mandate was to prevent the aids epidemic from spreading via truckers and sex-workers along the corridor. Since, the organisation has broadened in scope and today seeks to improve transport dynamics within the corridor and facilitate intra-regional trade and competitive industries. One such measure, is the monitoring of roadblocks along the corridor that seek to put pressure on states to reduce the number of obstacles for those moving up and down the corridor. They also monitor the condition of the road, and the amount of time it takes truckers to cross the various borders with their goods.

As goods and trucks travel up and down the corridor – so do regional migrants. The presence of strangers along the corridor is part of the everyday urbanity, creating encounters as people seek out opportunities along the various sites on the corridor. ECOWAS has sought to legislate this movement; in 1979 it passed the first protocol for free movement and residence for West African citizens, and in 2000 introduced an ECOWAS passport to facilitate the crossing of borders. The passport has had limited uptake, and so far, Benin is the only country along the corridor to have adopted it.

However, given the current preoccupation of Western aid donors with inter-continental African migration, there is a risk that the fluidity of movement is reframed as problematic to align with current regimes of containment. This in turn would overlook the key role mobility plays in enabling urban futures in West Africa. As people move up and down the corridor, multiple forms of belonging are unpacked, from ethnic and linguistic groups, to trade corporations. There is a danger that these forms of mobility are interpreted within the narrow European perspective on international migration, especially given the current securitisation and criminalisation of international African migration.