Every year, West Africa moves goods worth billions of dollars across its borders. Yet most
of that trade happens quietly, outside the official statistics that governments and
institutions rely on to understand the region’s economy.
Take food trade as an example. The OECD’s Sahel and West Africa Club estimates that
intra-regional food trade — food traded between West African countries — is worth
around USD 10 billion a year. That’s about six times higher than what official figures show.
To put that in perspective, it’s roughly equal to everything the region imports in rice,
wheat, and palm oil combined.
Once you account for this hidden trade, the picture changes even more. Up to 58% of the
region’s food exports actually stay within West Africa. That’s a similar share to trade within
the European Union — a bloc with twice as many member countries and an economy
fifteen times the size of ECOWAS’s.
So there’s a real gap between what’s actually happening on the ground and what gets
measured and reported. That gap isn’t a minor detail. It’s the whole story. This blog exists
to help close it — by following the actual movement of goods, money, and policy across
the region, instead of relying on an incomplete official picture.
A Region at an Inflection Point
West African trade is changing quickly, and it’s worth understanding why.
In January 2025, three countries — Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso — formally left ECOWAS,
the regional trade and political bloc that has governed much of West African commerce
for decades. They formed a new alliance called the Alliance of Sahel States, or AES. Two
months later, in March 2025, the AES introduced a 0.5% import tax on goods coming from
ECOWAS countries. This was a significant move: it went directly against the ECOWAS
Trade Liberalisation Scheme, a decades-old system that had allowed goods to move
between member states duty-free.
Economists studying this split expect it to reshape trade patterns. As new customs duties
apply to trade between AES countries and non-WAEMU ECOWAS members, import costs
are likely to rise, pushing trade toward WAEMU countries and international markets
instead. Some of ECOWAS’s largest economies — Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Nigeria — are
positioned to benefit from this shift, potentially at the expense of the countries that left.
At the same time, ECOWAS itself is projecting growth. The bloc is targeting 5% regional
economic growth in 2026, building on 4.6% growth in 2025 — a performance that
outpaced the rest of the African continent. Improved trade facilitation within the region
is cited as one reason for that growth.
So West Africa is currently pulled in two directions at once: parts of the region are
fragmenting, while other parts are working to integrate further. Anyone doing business in
the region, shaping policy, or investing here needs to understand both trends — not just
one.
A Recurring Pattern: Self-Inflicted Trade Disruption
Not all of West Africa’s trade problems come from outside the region. Many are
self-created, through regulation and unilateral decision-making.
Here are two clear examples. In August 2019, Nigeria closed its land borders with Benin,
Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. The goal was to stop rice smuggling and protect domestic
rice production. The closure had limited success in achieving that goal, but it did disrupt
regional trade.
In February 2022, Benin took a similar unilateral step — restricting and taxing exports of
rice, soya, cotton, cassava, shea butter, and yams, in an effort to keep domestic prices
low.
Both of these actions violated existing ECOWAS trade rules and treaties. And they aren’t
isolated cases — they represent a broader pattern. Individual countries repeatedly take
unilateral action on borders and tariffs, even when it undermines the very trade
frameworks — like the ETLS, the AfCFTA, and the ECOWAS Common External Tariff — that
are supposed to govern how the region trades.
This is a pattern this blog will follow closely: which countries close their borders, why they
do it, and what it actually costs the traders and everyday consumers caught in the
middle.
What This Blog Will Cover
To make sense of West African trade, this blog will track it at three levels:
- Trade within ECOWAS — including the ongoing consequences of the AES split,
from new tariffs to logistics disruptions. - Trade across the African continent — under the framework of the African
Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). - Trade with international partners — how West Africa connects to global markets
outside the continent.
Coverage will also include the policies and infrastructure that shape trade: tariff
changes, border closures, customs union developments, ports, road corridors, and
regional infrastructure like the ECOWAS Regional Electricity Market.
Sector by sector, food and agriculture will come first — the food economy makes up
about one-third of West Africa’s GDP and employs two-thirds of the region’s population.
From there, coverage will expand into mining, energy, and manufacturing.
According to the International Trade Centre, there’s more than $2 billion in intra-regional
trade potential still unrealized in West Africa — trade that could happen but currently
doesn’t, due to gaps in investment and ongoing market friction. Identifying exactly where
that friction exists — country by country, policy by policy — is the core, ongoing work of
this blog.