News:
November 13, 2024
Leader of the Liberian delegation to the Community Parliament, Senator Edwin Melvine Snowe Jr. has called on the West Africa sub-region to prioritize harmonization of a single currency and telecommunication systems.
This, he stated though important, but would have to be achieved over time as Members of the Community Parliament still express divergent views in approaching and addressing the subject matter.
In an interview, on the subject matter of having a common constitution in the sub-region, where most of the time English speaking West African member states have a different constitution from French and Lusophone speaking member states, Chairman of the Community’s Parliament Committee on Political Affairs, Peace, Security and African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) noted that, it will take many years to achieve and added that there is the need to look at things that affect our day-to-day life of our people in the sub-region.
“If I leave Ghana now, travel two and half hours to the border with Ivory Coast, Togo, I have to look for a way of getting a new currency on that side, so our market women who are doing cross border trading, they are going through a lot of challenges”, he lamented.
“Again, same market women moving from Liberia to Sierra Leone, Guinea and Ivory Coast all the four member states within the Manu River Bassen they have different currencies, so trading in that small region you have to change currencies for every jurisdiction that you enter into which makes it very challenging.
So, harmonizing our regional constitution is possible; but will take many, many more years to achieve. What is more pressing for me for now is currency, telecommunication and transportation”, he emphasized.
As to whether as a sub-region, we will ever get there, he noted that it’s has been quite challenging and he has had the thinking that to get there “we need to do it in phases. I have suggested we look at the Francophone Countries; they already have a single currency with the exception of Guinea that has the Guinea France”.
“So, you put all the French member countries and Lusophone together, you join them with Cape Verde which has their own currency then they have one currency and do the same with English speaking member countries. Then you start with two currencies, and as time goes on the two currencies will be metamorphosed to a single currency for the West African sub-region.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com