With about 170 projects valued at $108 billion in the pipeline, the private sector is expected to take the lead in driving the long-awaited single regional market under the 2026 West Africa Integration and Investment Summit (WAIIS).

Sierra Leone’s President, Julius Maada Bio, disclosed this yesterday in Lagos shortly before proceeding to a high-level meeting with key stakeholders driving the regional integration ambition.

Bio is co-chairing the second meeting of the WAIIS Private Sector Advisory Board with the Chairman of Heirs Holdings, Tony Elumelu. The meeting was also attended by the Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who joined Bio and Elumelu in a media briefing.

Bio said the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) had existed for five decades without achieving a truly integrated market for its more than 400 million people, stressing that the region must now rely more heavily on the private sector to translate economic integration into practical business opportunities.

“I am mobilising private sector in West Africa and around the world to get together and start to be serious about a free market in West Africa,” the President said.

Elumelu said Bio, in his capacity as former Chairman of the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government, had approached him, Aliko Dangote and other business leaders to support the initiative and had moved the summit’s secretariat to Lagos to strengthen private-sector participation.

The Africapitalism advocate said the initiative was designed to mobilise resources, create jobs for young people and demonstrate that West Africa could overcome its development challenges through greater economic cooperation and private investment.

Sanwo-Olu urged African countries to focus on producing goods and services that Africans could use and consume, saying political leaders must provide the policy support, regulatory certainty and assurances required for businesses to operate across borders.

He said deeper regional integration would remain difficult unless African governments created an environment that encouraged businesses to invest, expand and trade across national boundaries.

The summit is scheduled to be held in Sierra Leone in November.

Chief Operating Officer of WAIIS, Joseph Nganga, said the programme would begin with a pre-summit meeting on November 12, followed by a ministerial session on November 16 and a meeting of heads of state on November 17 and 18.

Nganga said the projects in the pipeline covered energy, agriculture, digital transformation and critical minerals, with a separate focus on women-led businesses.

Among the projects are the Côte d’Ivoire-Liberia-Sierra Leone-Guinea (CLSG) transmission line and the Mano River and Abidjan-Lagos corridors.

He said about $90 billion would be required to develop transmission lines across the region, while a $1 billion project-preparation facility would support agricultural investments aimed at improving food security.

On digital transformation, Nganga said the summit was promoting the concept of “data embassies”, under which data stored in another ECOWAS member state would receive the same protection as data stored in its home country.

He said the African Development Bank, United Nations Development Programme and African Export-Import Bank had established a $10 billion initiative to support the programme.

Another $10 billion facility is being proposed to help countries map their mineral resources and finance early-stage exploration, which often carries significant risks for investors.

Nganga said WAIIS would also target small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), rather than limiting participation to large investors.

According to him, the summit would provide a marketplace for connecting businesses across borders, creating opportunities such as linking Nigerian tomato farmers with buyers in Ghana.

Chief Technical Adviser in Sierra Leone’s Office of the President, Patrick Kormawa, said West African heads of state had endorsed WAIIS as a statutory event to be held every two years.

He said government officials had met to review the proposed projects, summit programme and deal-room structure, with their recommendations to be presented to the heads of state and other principals.