Lamin
Jobe, the Minister of Trade, Industry, Regional Integration and Employment has
underscored the cordial relationship that exists between Gambia and Senegal,
arguing that regional integration can’t work anywhere if it failed within the
Senegambia region.
“Regional
integration is a very core mandate of the ECOWAS commission. Regional
Integration, I feel has to start here in The Gambia, by that I mean The Gambia
and Senegal were so closely related that regional integration, if it failed
within the Senegambia region, it can’t work anywhere else in ECOWAS,” he said.
Minister
Jobe was speaking yesterday during the opening of day long national
consultation on ECOWAS post vision 2020 development under the theme; towards
peace and borderless region held at The Gambia Hotel School.
Officials
said the national consultation is meant to initiate discussions on the ECOWAS
Vision 2020 with the view to assessing achievements and challenges so as to map
out effective strategies for the ‘West Africa we want to see’ in the next 25-50
years.
The
long-time vision of ECOWAS, he said, is to create a ‘borderless, peaceful,
prosperous and cohesive region’, built on good governance and where people have
the capacity to access and harness its enormous resources through the creation
of the opportunities for sustainable development and environmental
preservation.
He
added: “Creating a borderless ECOWAS of the people and accelerating
socio-economic development in West Africa can hardly be attained without
regional integration. That requires collective action by all community
members.”
ECOWAS,
he continued, has been promoting economic cooperation and regional integration
for accelerated development of the West African economy since its inception on
May 28, 1975.
The
Trade Minister said: “As we formulate a new roadmap for a post-2020 vision for
ECOWAS, it is important to gather contributions, views and concerns on the
process of regional integration and to assess its contribution and impact on
the daily lives of the people.”
Kebba
K. Barrow, majority leader of the National Assembly dwelled on the significance
of the forum, saying that environmental degradation is a concern to the ECOWAS
region.
‘The
ECOWAS commission is working very hard to ensure that the social cohesion and
the integration process that have been alluded to in 1975 which is now
developed and centred on people.”
The
forum, he went on, will avail the participants the opportunity to come out and
have their say in what is going to be developed in the next ECOWAS vision. The
majority leader urged the participants to be committed and share their views in
terms of youth employment, creating job opportunity for young people and also
look at the environment which he said is vital in the society.
ECOWAS
vision 2020, he said, is aimed at transforming ECOWAS from an ‘ECOWAS of
States’ where the integration process is dominated by governments and its
agents to an ‘ECOWAS of the People’ which would place the population at the
epicentre of the integration process.
