ABOUT THE BOOK

“ECOWAS Regional Integration: The West African Monetary Zone Experience” is a sharp and thought-provoking work that details the profound impact of regional integration on development, international relations, and more significant trading among ECOWAS countries and its potential to help increase production efficiency in the region.

Drawing on several years of career in West African Monetary Institute, including experience as a Director General, the Author, Prof. Ngozi Egbuna, provides a unique and comprehensive analysis that reveals grounds for optimism that regional integration in West Africa can produce tangible results in trading across the ECOWAS nations, including resilience to economic and financial shocks. With compelling narrative, she makes an important contribution to the reality of the institutional requirements for a successful Monetary Union in ECOWAS, as she considers how best the political momentum for a Union can be channelled toward a fundamental improvement in underlying policies – the macroeconomic and structural policies, as success in this endeavour would help increase exchange rate stability.

Furthermore, the book reviews the economic situation of the ECOWAS member states to evaluate the limitations and the ease with which they can proceed to a common currency. It also examines the fate of the ECOWAS with a common currency and concludes with a glimpse of their future.

“ECOWAS Regional Integration” deploys solid empirical facts and sophisticated analyses to thoroughly defend its assertions; it is an essential read for anyone interested in economic development in West Africa and, indeed, in Africa as a whole.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Prof. Ngozi E. Egbuna is a visiting Professor at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka and the immediate past Director General of the West African Monetary Institute, where she was on Secondment from the Central Bank of Nigeria.

Egbuna is an astute Economist with over three decades of strategic and focused leadership in central banking, economic research, monetary policy formulation, and financial and economic integration in the West African sub-region. She has a vast knowledge of the economies of West Africa with a proven track record of implementing innovative solutions that yield sustainable economic growth and development across the sub-region.