Impact of Geoeconomic Fragmentation on Regional Economic Integration in West Africa: A Post-Structuralist Discourse Approach (Published)
This paper explored the relationship between regional economic integration and geoeconomic fragmentation in the West African Sub-region. It focused on the future of the second West Africa Monetary Zone (WAMZ) within the continuing fragmented system. A post-structuralist discourse approach was used to analyze how geoeconomic and political risks affect the WAMZ convergence process. An assessment of fragility risk of the regional economic cooperation shows how the spillover effect of global geopolitical fragmentation is leading to regional geopolitical fragmentation, which breed cracks in the regional economic integration process among developing and fragile states. It is recommended that the regional economic integration framework should be revisited to strengthen institutional resilience and scale up monetary and financial system surveillance. The focus should be on building momentum towards strong institutional support to pursue a win-win approach towards the evolving regional fragmentation policies. For the member states, competing to attract FDI through friend-shoring and near-shoring is an utmost important, however, a concerted effort should portray the region as a neutral economic bloc and pursue a neutral-shoring as the fourth approach to fragmentation policy.
Keywords: West Africa, impact of geoeconomic fragmentation, post-structuralist discourse approach, regional economic integration