Stakeholders at the opening of the 2026 extraordinary session and seminar of the Parliament of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS Parliament) have called for strategic actions to expand intra-community trade through the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

Speaking yesterday in Abuja on the theme, ‘Deepening Regional Integration Through the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA): Opportunities and Challenges for Expanding Intra-Community Trade Within the ECOWAS Region’, participants decried the slow takeoff due to myriad challenges.

AfCFTA came into force in 2019 with the aim of creating a single market and facilitating free movement of persons and goods to deepen intra-community trade. Stakeholders, however, lamented deluge of challenges arising from the policy had hampered its implementation.

According to the parliament, the seminar will serve to bridge implementation gaps through awareness-raising and the harmonisation of national-level policies.

Declaring the session opened, the Speaker, ECOWAS Parliament, Hadja Mémounatou Ibrahima, said that with nearly 50 years of integration experience, ECOWAS cannot just accompany the AfCFTA process but lead, coordinate and harmonise it.

The speaker, however, noted that, despite immense opportunities, intra-regional trade accounted for less than 10 per cent of total trade.

She also blamed member states yet to ratify the AfCFTA Agreement or to define national strategies to slow coordinated implementation and reduce the bloc’s global influence.

Some of the strategies for achieving this, she said, would include consolidating democracy and the rule of law, preserving peace and security, and promoting women’s leadership.

Nigeria’s Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, represented by his deputy, who is also the First Deputy Speaker of ECOWAS Parliament, Barau Jibrin, warned that if the parliament failed in legislative coherence or neglected oversight, the trade agreements would remain mere parchment and various declarations would dissolve into bureaucratic dust.

He therefore tasked the parliament with enacting enabling legislation to eliminate barriers and promote regional trade, noting that over-dependence on foreign aid would breed vulnerability.

Akpabio also admonished that national laws must not contradict regional commitments, charging the Parliament to strengthen oversight and accelerate reform.

Also speaking, Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, represented by his Minister of State, Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, commended the time of the session, noting it came at a time the region needed urgent consolidation of its integration agenda.

The President of the ECOWAS Commission, Dr Omar Touray, noted that AfCFTA offered a unique framework for transparency and social inclusion in the integration process of West Africa.