West Africa: ECOWAS Parliament Adopts Framework Document for Vision 2050

Monrovia — The Parliament of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS Parliament) have adopted a framework document for the full realization of “ECOWAS Vision 2050.” The Meeting was held in Monrovia.

The objective of this seminar was to enable Community Members of Parliament, take ownership of ECOWAS Vision 2050 and ensure their full involvement in its implementation.

The ECOWAS 2050 Vision describes the desired future, the raison d’être, and the values of the region as well as the ambition it nurtures for its peoples. This vision, which is political in nature, constitutes a societal project, a collective design forged on a system of shared values and a collective will to build a common future.

Thus, the Vision that has been retained for ECOWAS by the year 2050 is informed by the findings and recommendations of the final and independent evaluation of the 2020 Vision which highlighted the achievements and unmet long-term objectives.

The process of constructing the new Vision was therefore based on the baseline scenario called “Torch of Africa”, the aspirations of ECOWAS populations collected during national and regional consultations, the results of the retrospective study and the residual and hopeful objectives of the ECOWAS 2020 Vision.

This Vision is therefore based on the transition from an ECOWAS of States to an ECOWAS of Peoples, and projects its full realization by 2050. Thus, the ECOWAS Vision for 2050 reads as follows: “A fully integrated community of peoples in a peaceful, prosperous region with strong institutions and respect for fundamental freedoms and working towards inclusive and sustainable development”.

By 2050, the impact of the realization of this Vision will be to have fully integrated peoples within ECOWAS, a fully peaceful and prosperous region, with strong institutions that promote the rule of law and respect for fundamental freedoms; all of which will foster inclusive and sustainable development.

Through this new Vision, the region aims to reposition itself in the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals while taking into account persistent and emerging challenges. The aim is to contribute to the deepening of the integration process in West Africa, to poverty reduction while ensuring better complementarity of approaches and responses between the various local, national, regional and continental levels.

The ECOWAS 2050 Vision is based on five pillars that will determine the broad lines of action for its realisation. The Strategic Orientations that emerge from this Vision are the strategic options that are compatible with both the ECOWAS identity and the reference scenario. They will then be broken down into basic actions and translated into the next ECOWAS Regional Strategic Development Plan.

The Vision is based on five pillars which includes; Peace, Governance and Rule of Law, Economic Integration and Interconnectivity, Transformation, Inclusive and Sustainable Development, and Social Inclusion.

The pillars of the Vision have been reformulated into strategic objectives. Those long-term objectives are then broken down into Strategic Orientations. The relevance trees method was used to define the Strategic Orientations. The aim of this method is to help in the selection of elementary actions in order to meet the strategic objectives. It is about relating different hierarchical levels of a problem, from the general (Pillar and Strategic Objective) to the specific (Strategic Orientations).

In concrete terms, this method consists of breaking down the strategic objectives (Pillars) into Strategic Orientations. This method makes it possible to avoid redundancy, to discover new ideas, to justify the choices made, to improve coherence and finally to structure the objectives and the means. Each Strategic Orientation is broken down into potential action areas to guide planning and the development of the Medium-Term Strategic Framework as well as various action plans.

Source:

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *