COMPARATION WITH AFRICAN UNION

To understand a little bit more what is the ECOWAS and how it operates we have decided to compare it with another African region, but the region we have decided to use as a comparison is not an economic one, it is more similar to a political region, the African Union.


The biggest institution that advocates for the cooperation within Africa is the African Union (AU). This institution sees itself as “An integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in global arena.” It has 55 members, including all of ECOWAS.
The govermental structure of ECOWAS and AU is similar, although this last one has other councils such as the peace and security.
They work on similar projects such as gender equality, trade, agiculture or social affairs. However, ECOWAS is more focused on economic integration and AU looks for the recognizion of the African States in the global arena.
The African Union doesn’t have working institutions for economic integration. They have three projects in mind which are the African Central Bank, the African Investment Bank and the African Monetary Found. On the other hand, ECOWAS has the Bank for Investment and Development (EBID) and a economic partnership with Europe that allows the institution to head toward the economic integration of West African States.


Despite that, both institutions also collaborate. On September 17th 2017, they met to share experiences on civil-military coordination and to talk about improve the level of collective response to the challenges of peace and security on Africa.