The second statutory meeting of the Ministerial Ad-Hoc Committee on Institutional Reform scheduled at the Farmington Hotel in Robertsfield on May 29 – 30, 2017 in Liberia gives a great opportunity to register some critical concerns about the reform process within ECOWAS.
Firstly, I am gratified by the opportunity that Liberia is hosting such an immense meeting with some leaders from the global community.
The Economic Community of West Africa State regional integration programs have significantly contributed to regional trade, macroeconomic development and put in place mechanism to facilitate movement of people, goods and services. Amidst these is the biggest investment on peacekeeping missions in the region.
An assessment has flagged the need for institutional reform initiative, focusing policy on finance, peace, Security, and good governance, competition and equity, cooperation and development, integration, socio-economic and monetary integration, institutional capacity and global relevance.
Perhaps the next three decades will attract more harmonization initiatives, strengthened by institutional reforms, particularly reforms affecting systems, business processes and procedures and regional integration policies such as common passports, currency trade or information sharing.
Since Economic Community of West Africa State came into existence on May 28, 1975 one of the most critical areas of investment that has been under plan and less invested with minimum attention is ECOWAS most useful asset, the human resources within the ECOWAS region.
Chapter XI of the revised treaty of ECOWAS emphasizes cooperation in human resources… development at individual state level with the objective of strengthening cooperation among member states especially in fields such as education, training and employment; and to harmonize and coordinate policies and programmes in order to consolidate existing training institutions.
This in their wisdom, will improve the efficacy of educational systems, encourage exchanges between schools and universities, establish equivalences of academic, professional and technical qualifications, encourage literacy, promote the teaching and practice of the official languages within ECOWAS, establish regional centers of excellence in various disciplines and finally encourage the exchange of skilled manpower between member states.
Without overemphasizing the point, this critical objective has significantly underperformed within the region and the red-hot desire for mass exodus has turned out to be a nightmare with high death rate in oceans and dangerous border points.
ECOWAS has a population of about 300 million people, 33% of which are youth and a significant number of who lack access to proper education and are largely unemployed; and therefore the need to venture the most horrifying risks has become a matter of necessity.
Investments into Institutional reforms seem to have outlasted its resounding usefulness in the region without conducting holistic impacts analysis.
Other meaningful triggers are being ignored. Reform of any sorts must consider human resources development strategy as nerve system since it is responsible for leading systems, procedures, processes and technology that are being reformed.
The strategy for strengthening ECOWAS public and private sectors also depends how much stable investments considered for its most critical asset. It is vital for this conference to rationalize ECOWAS human resource revised treaty beyond individual nations to a more robust regions agenda.
Such agenda must consider critical fields of discipline including but not restricted to health, education, environment, agriculture, energy, transportation, trade, mining, science, technology defense etc.
The establishment of the so-called regional centers of excellence in various disciplines is theoretically a good idea but investment decisions farfetched.
As a strategy, ECOWAS has to design acceptable attitude, knowledge, skills, competencies framework good for public, private, civil, and public services capable of supporting economic integration, common trade, investment promotion, economic growth and business development across the region.
As a career practitioner in the field of human resources, organization development and change management, I look forward to the first regional agenda that provides a common framework for the ECOWAS region that will harmonize West African countries human resource development strategy to global agreed objectives such as the recalibrated MDG into SDG.
It is imperative therefore, that ECOWAS takes a review of its approaches to development programs and reform initiatives for the common good of its 300 million people and growing youth of 33% of the total population.
Liberia might want to propose a regional conference on long term strategic Human Resource Strategy in three essential streams: (1) Human Resource Capacity Development strategy (2) Retention and Succession Development (3) Suitability Program Development for regional Human Resource practices.
In my view, outcomes of such conference will prevent the overwhelming loss of potential assets, curtail other phenomena such as health, governance, economic growth and development and reduce the exodus and death of young people seeking European opportunities. Collectively, ECOWAS human resources capacity readiness is indeterminate to confront the level of challenges in the region.
Mohammed Swaray, Contributing Writer
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