Integración Regional en África: La CEDEAO como un Área de Moneda Única

Globalisation is a phenomenon that has increased the commercial transactions volume, allowing countries to benefit and to have access to a wide number of markets. However, this process, along with the increasing complex geopolitical and economic environment among countries and regions of the world, has led the governments to seek solutions that combine the needs and priorities of that areas, easing in this way the economic transactions. The different alternatives to achieve integration and regional coordination include the creation of institutions and supranational and international organizations. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is one of these organizations created to overtake the existing political, economic, historic, and social issues in West Africa through the creation of a single monetary area among the fifteen member states in order to achieve acceptable economic growth levels and sustainable development in the region. Following the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) model, it would be explained why a monetary integration and creation of a new currency is needed, in order to end the colonial vestiges in Africa, as well as the path to be followed to place the region as a competitive market in the context of the international economy.