A Parliamentary Seminar aimed at taking ownership of ECOWAS Vision 2050

The Parliament of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS Parliament) is organizing a parliamentary seminar on the theme: “ECOWAS Vision 2050: Formulation Process and Implementation Challenges”, from 03 to 05 March 2022 in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. The objective of this seminar is to enable Community Members of Parliament, take ownership of ECOWAS Vision 2050 and ensure their full involvement in its implementation.

The mantra accompanying the ECOWAS Vision 2050 is, ” ECOWAS of the people; peace and prosperity for all”.

The Community Vision 2050, which was developed through a participatory process that took into account the deep aspirations of West African citizens, is structured around five fundamental pillars, namely (i) Peace, Security and Stability; (ii) Governance and Rule of Law; (iii) Economic Integration and Interconnectivity; (iv) Transformation and Inclusive and Sustainable Development; (v) Social Inclusion.

Thus, this new prospective regional reference framework which stands for the next thirty years proclaims that ECOWAS must become and sustain the identity of a community of peoples that places greater emphasis on young people and women as the driving forces of the region.

It is in this context that the ECOWAS Parliament, at its Second Ordinary Session in 2021, while expressing a favourable opinion on the adoption of the ECOWAS Vision 2050, decided to organise a parliamentary seminar that will enable Members of Parliament appropriate this reference framework and ensure their involvement in the preparation of operational documents, particularly the Medium-Term Strategic Framework, with appropriate plans to accompany its implementation.

This seminar will be followed by the First Extraordinary Session of the ECOWAS Parliament in 2022, from 08 to 12 March 2022, also in Monrovia.  This session will focus on the political and security situation in the region, in Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso.

It is note-worthy to recall that in December 2016, the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government, approved the enhancement of powers of Parliament, transiting the institution from being strictly advisory to having the powers to consider and render parliamentary opinions on issues such as the Community budget and other Community-wide issues that may be referred to it by ECOWAS institutions and agencies, via the ECOWAS Commission.

The ECOWAS Parliament is composed of 115 seats. For the allocation of seats, each member state is guaranteed a minimum of five seats. The remaining forty seats are distributed in proportion to the population of each country. Consequently, Nigeria has 35 seats, followed by Ghana 8 seats, Côte d’Ivoire 7 seats. Others are Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, Niger and Senegal with 6 seats each, whereas Benin, Cape Verde, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Togo are allotted 5 seats each.