Commerce international - courte synthèse en anglais

Introduction

In West Africa, following the successful lead given by the European Union, measures were taken to strengthen regional and sub-regional economic co-operation arrangements. By the end of the 1970s, virtually all West African countries belonged to one or more sub-regional groupings. This is how we assisted to the creation of ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) in 1975, which was designed to strengthen regional integration in West Africa in order to promote intra-regional trade, seen as favorable to growth and economic development. Nineteen years after (1994), WAEMU (Economic and Monetary Union of West Africa) was created in replacement of WAMU (West African Monetary Union) which is an interesting case for monetary integration. They are similar in the fact that they both aim the integration in the broader sense, however, the way they do to achieve this goal differ. To get this difference, it is necessary even imperative to do a comparison, between ECOWAS and WAEMU, in their process of developing the regional trade. To support this idea, we will do the presentation of those two institutions with their objectives, goals and accomplishments finally we will compare them with regard to the processes used by each of them to develop the regional trade.

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