By Haddy Touray
President Adama Barrow has stressed the need for more practical and coordinated approaches to tackle these challenges.
Addressing his counterpart at the 66th Ordinary session of the ECOWAS Summit in Abuja, Nigeria on Sunday, he further stressed for improvement in the areas like poverty, women empowerment, irregular migration, and youth unemployment that impede development and integration.
“Our region continues to face numerous challenges that urgently require collective action. The level of insecurity or threats to peace across the sub-region, for instance, call for more effective and sustainable solutions.
Issues of poverty, youth unemployment, women empowerment, and irregular migration, worsened by climate change and other barriers to stability, continually hinder development and integration efforts within the Community. Consequently, we need more practical and better coordinated approaches to address them,” the Gambian leader told his counterparts.
He added: “Over the years, we have made much progress in the areas of regional integration, good governance, restoration of democracy, and strengthening of constitutional order in Member States.
Promoting and building on such achievements will surely enhance our credibility and strengthen our position as a unified body devoted to regional and global concerns.”
According to him, in line with continental goals, through its peace and security initiatives, the ECOWAS Authority must continue to support the ECOWAS Commission’s efforts to resolve conflict in the region and beyond.
He noted that to ensuring a peaceful community, regional need to have collectively champion regional integration through trade and strengthening regional trade, facilitating free flow of goods and people, and expanding economic opportunities for citizens that are viable options to reinforce.
“The opportunities and benefits that go with the African Continental Free Trade Area should be wisely harnessed as well.
We need to reaffirm commitment to adopting a single currency. This is crucial for creating a unified market in the sub-region to ease trade, attract investments, and lower costs associated with currency exchange,” he pointed out.
He stressed that relying on various currencies imposes exchange rate costs on Member States, thus hindering intra-regional trade and investment, adding that these barriers discourage investments by raising the cost of capital movement.