Unable to raise $7b budget, ECOWAS shelves regional TV and radio channels project

This year, 2017, would have been the timeline set for the full roll out of TV and radio channels by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to communicate the regional bloc’s visions, projects, programmes, successes and challenges. But the idea has been shelved because ECOWAS is unable to raise the $7 billion estimated budget.

Communication remains one of the biggest challenges of ECOWAS, as the organisation has to rely on commercial TV and radio stations, sometimes at considerable cost to broadcast its messages.

ECOWAS Heads of State and Government agreed in 2000 to set up a radio and television channel. They then commissioned feasibility studies in different phases to assess the needs and to put together estimates for the projects.

“The idea behind this is to promote the West African identity. We have free movement of goods and people, a common passport for the entire sub-region. We are about to launch a biometric ID card that would allow people to move and settle in any ECOWAS member state without resident permit. We have been making tremendous progress as far as regional integration is concerned,” Dr. Isaias Barret da Rosa, the ECOWAS Commissioner in charge of Telecommunication and Information Technologies was quoted as saying in news reports in 2015.

He also indicated that the setting up of the facilities will promote integration in the sub-region and help project the identity of its people.

But it has been made known that the idea has been shelved after the cost was made known to the Head of States and Governments. The regional leaders thought the cost was too high and couldn’t be raised.

“The Heads of State thought that amount was too high, and therefore the project couldn’t take off,” an ECOWAS official told the Network of Economic Journalists for West Africa in Dakar, Senegal during a workshop September 28 and 29, 2017.

It is unclear if ECOWAS would return to the idea anytime soon. The next Summit of Head of States and Governments is expected to be held in Lome, Togo in December 2017.

Meanwhile, the region with a population of about 335 million people, which is about one-third of the population of sub-Saharan Africa, with an estimated GDP of around $345 billion, lost some $268 billion to illicit financial flows within a 10 year period from 2004 to 2013, according to figures published by the Global Financial Integrity (GFI). That amount is approximately 78 per cent of the region’s GDP.

By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi
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