The Politics and Diplomacy of Peacekeeping in West Africa: The Ecowas Operation in Liberia

1995 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 569-593 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ademola Adeleke

TheEconomic Community of West African States (Ecowas) was established in May 1975 as an organisation to promote the development of the sub-region, and for 15 years did not deviate from this mandate. The 16 member-states – Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d'Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo – restricted their interactions to purely economic matters and ran shy of political issues confronting West Africa. This tradition changed in 1990 when Ecowas decided to intervene in the civil war which had broken out in Liberia. Its strategy to resolve the conflict followed two parallel but mutually interactive channels — making and enforcing peace. The former involved negotiations and arbitration; the latter the deployment in August 1990 of a 3,000 strong multinational force to supervise a cease-fire.

1989 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunday Babalola Ajulo

The Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) was established by the Treaty signed in Lagos on 25 May 1975 by the Heads of State and Government (or their representatives) from Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo. They were joined a few months later by Cape Verde, thereby increasing the number of member-states to 16. Following the post-World War II convention whereby international organisations formally insert in their constitutive instruments a declaratory statement concerning their status, it is not surprising that Article 60(1) stipulated that the Community ‘shall enjoy legal personality’. Although such organisations may be similar they are never identical, and this is why the nature and scope of the legal personality of each needs to be ascertained and discussed.


Significance The end to the UN peace operation came almost three months after the departure of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Mission in Guinea Bissau (ECOMIB). The completion of both missions comes amid a tense political standoff between President Umaro Sissoco Embalo and the former ruling African Party for the Independence of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC). Impacts Embalo’s heavy-handed approach could bring short-term stability but poses a long-term threat to a fragile political and security situation. Drug trafficking will remain a major challenge for the new administration, despite hard-line government commitments. Embalo is looking to regional allies to attract much-needed funds for his administration and provide technical and financial assistance.


1998 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-243

Algeria, Angola, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Congo, Congo (Dem Rep), Cote d'lvoire, Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Togo, Tunisia and the United Republic of Tanzania.


2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (s1) ◽  
pp. 187-202
Author(s):  
N.P. Kolliesuah ◽  
J.L. Saysay ◽  
M.M. Zinnah ◽  
A.T. Freeman ◽  
D. Chinenye

West Africa is a core producer of Cashew (Anacardium occidentale L.), supplying 45% of the commodity on the global market. Despite this huge share of the international market, only 10% of the commodity is processed and consumed domestically. The low rate of consumption is reflected by low investment in the cashew industry, making the crop underutilised as a food and nutrition security crop in the region. The objective of this study was to analyse the trends in production, levels of consumption and export of the crop in West Africa, as a basis for informing strategic development interventions. This work utilised metadata from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation database, Nitidae and other relevant sources to explore the production, consumption and export patterns of cashew from the year 2000 up to 2017. The metadata used were analysed using descriptive statistics. The study revealed that eleven (Cote D’Ivoire, Nigeria, Benin, Guinea Bissau, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, Guinea, The Gambia, Senegal, and Togo) of the sixteen countries in West Africa were actively engaged in cashew production. It was also projected that production will decline in the next five years in countries such as Nigeria, Togo, Senegal, and Burkina Faso due to a reduction in the land under cashew cultivation, an increase in pest and disease infestations, coupled with a decline in genetic improvement and poor extension services. Production will remain stable in The Gambia and Guinea Bissau because most trees there are yet to hit the peak of production; and of reduced investment in research and development. Cashew consumption locally is dismal (<10% across the region) due to limited attention given to the processing industry in the region. To boost local production and consumption, as well maintain the 45% share of the international market in the next five years and beyond, it is essential to invest in genetic improvement, modification of agronomic practices, and investment in the processing industry, as well as research and development of the crop.


1993 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 173-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Law

This paper draws attention to an ambitious project in the publication of source material for the precolonial history of West Africa, which has recently been approved for inclusion in the Fontes Historiae Africanae series of the British Academy. In addition to self-promotion, however, I wish also to take the opportunity to air some of the problems of editorial strategy and choice which arise with regard to the editing and presentation of this material, in the hope of provoking some helpful feedback on these issues.The material to be published consists of correspondence of the Royal African Company of England relating to the West African coast in the late seventeenth century. The history of the Royal African Company (hereafter RAC) is in general terms well known, especially through the pioneering (and still not superseded) study by K.G. Davies (1957). The Company was chartered in 1672 with a legal monopoly of English trade with Africa. Its headquarters in West Africa was at Cape Coast (or, in the original form of the name, Cabo Corso) Castle on the Gold Coast, and it maintained forts or factories not only on the Gold Coast itself, but also at the Gambia, in Sierra Leone, and at Offra and Whydah on the Slave Coast. It lost its monopoly of the African trade in 1698, and thereafter went into decline, effectively ceasing to operate as a trading concern in the 1720s, although it continued to manage the English possessions on the coast of West Africa until it was replaced by a regulated company (i.e., one open to all traders), the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa, in 1750.


1993 ◽  
Vol 21 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 74-83
Author(s):  
S. Byron Tarr

This is a Liberian perspective on the unique initiative by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to resolve the Liberian conflict by organizing and deploying a Peace Monitoring Group in Liberia. It considers whether ECOWAS’ initiative can become a self-reliant security system that can end a civil war and institutionalize deterrence to subregional inter-state and internal conflicts. Can this self-generated, West African initiative set the stage for democratization? Is the initiative the start of an inter-African cooperative security system? Is the model of Nigerian leadership a harbinger of a regional hegemony in the making? Is the modest role of the USA constructive in resolving the conflict, in light of the fact that Liberia is a country with which the USA has had an historic relationship?


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