“The Accidental Ecowas & AU Citizen”: A Tale Of Two African Cities…; Why ECOBANK Needs To Become The Cynosure Of West Africa, And COMAI To Africa’s Rescue? Part III

In the second-parter of last week's piece, I barely touched on the issue of ECOBANK. Interestingly, there have been significant developments since I wrote the first piece, including that of the stepping-down of the Chairman Lawson. I would like to make up for lost time by revisiting the issue of ECOBANK.

It is to be recalled that even at the 7th Conference of African Ministers in Accra in December 2011, the Pan-African Bank featured in one of the pivotal documents that formed the basis of the discussions on “Boosting Intra-African Trade.”

As Africa Trade Ministers met in Accra between 29th Dec and 3rd Dec, 2011, one of the recommendations they made in their "ACTION PLAN FOR BOOSTING INTRA‐AFRICAN TRADE" is for banks like ECOBANK to do better in supporting intra-African trade.

In paragraph 25, they write: "Given the greater perceived risks of intra‐ African trade, the credit squeeze has tended to be more for such trade. This calls for more efforts in the development and strengthening of African financial institutions and mechanisms that accord high priority to the promotion of intra‐African trade and investment. There are currently some examples of African institutions whose activities need to be strengthened and replicated for the boosting of intra‐African trade. They include the COMESA PTA Bank, ECOBANK, the East African Development Bank, the African Export and Import Bank (AFREXIM), and the African Trade Insurance Agency (ATI)"

Beyond the fact that ECOBANK is now in Addis, most people might agree that ECOBANK has far from lived up ideally to the name of the "Pan-African Bank" when it comes to the way it deals with its customers all over the continent. Frequent ATM problems across the continent, coupled with a lack of appreciation of the genesis of ECOBANK and its future, means that we currently have an ECOBANK that does not deliver adequately to the little man in Africa. As recently as a few days ago, an article in a Sierra Leone paper online bemoaned that lack of customer service “Ecobankers” display to their clients.

The article, entitled “Worst Bank for customer care is Ecobank”, explains how “for Ecobank, it is the opposite, most of the staff are not facial friendly, they treat customers with levity and they don't care. It is very frustrating to go to Ecobank that is supposed to be a model, but they are always in the news for all the wrong things. Workers compromising their job to fleece the bank, the government and customers, disrespecting their customers with impunity and above all they just don't care.”

The article continues that “they might be the third biggest bank in the country, but their behaviour would definitely affect their growth and they will pay for complacency one day. Nobody in his right mind would want to be a customer in such an institution that treats its customers like that. But because most workers have no choice now, that is why the bank is treating them like that.”

Same can be said for customers here in Ghana, where a number frequently complain about the lack of customer service that is dished on them.

Unbeknownst to many—even some staff I have spoken to over my five-years plus of banking there—ECOBANK remains the only bank on the continent that is backed explicitly by the development arm/bank of a regional economic community (ECOWAS). The Lome-based Ecowas Bank of Investment and Development (EBID) is, according to the Ecobank website, “the largest shareholder” of Ecobank. It therefore behooves it to go beyond the profit-motive and deliver more responsibly and efficiently to its customers all over Africa, with a special focus on facilitating banking for the African customer. If it is true that ECOWAS has a vision that by 2020, it should ensure a safe and sustainable West Africa, then it behooves it equally to monitor ECOBANK to deliver more adequately to its customers than it currently does.

The recent investigations by Nigerian regulators over alleged mismanagement that has led to the stepping down of Lawson, has prompted the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria to consider the establishment of a special college of supervisors that will soon be setup to regulate specifically the parent company of Ecobank-- Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (ETI). This could be a boon to those who have been calling for better regulation of the bank.

Furthermore, in an attempt to get Ecobank to pay greater attention to numerous complaints about how it does business not just in Ghana, but in all the countries Ecobank is represented, this writer set up a group in 2011 on Facebook called “ECOBANK GROUP WATCH”. (https://www.facebook.com/groups/ecobankgroupWatch/). This group seeks not just to complain about the ECOBANK group, but to facilitate a discussion about how we as citizens can bring pressure to bear on ECOBANK to live up to its claim of being a Pan-African bank by being more transparent and efficient in the way it delivers to customers. In addition, there is a twitter handle linked to the facebook group, where one can tweet complaints about Ecobank to on @ecobank_watch. It currently has 329 followers.

The bottom line is that Ecobank has tremendous potential. If it has been able to reach the apogee of Pan-Africanist aspirations (an office in the home of the African Union) in just 25 years, imagine what it can do by 2034 when continental integration is supposed to have been achieved and realized!

ECOBANK remains one of the promoters of the only research institute in West Africa—the West Africa Institute— that is backed by ECOWAS; UEMOA; the government of Cape Verde; EBID and ECOBANK. In June 2013, when I was in Lome to attend an OSIWA-West Africa Institute-sponsored training on West African integration, only ECOWAS had paid its subvention. ECOBANK staff did not show up to open the ceremony, under the pretext that they were involved in the 25-year celebratory meetings in Lome. One can only imagine no-one from ECOBANK would show up for the period of the training to even offer a pesewa towards WAI's efforts on research on regional integration in Africa, which I daresay involves a considerable section on financial integration in West Africa—a specialty of the Pan-African bank!

Promoting ECOWAS Accountability?
In these dark days where too many people are busy fighting against the cankers and ills of society, I want to do something different, and take a converse approach: instead of talking about ECOWAS's “duplicity”, I prefer talking about ECOWAS' non-accountability, and how we can counter it.

I have spent many column inches over the past twenty-four months-plus both praising and condemning ECOWAS efforts, or lack thereof, that I fear I might be perpetuating the perception of ECOWAS not working. I don't seek to do ECOWAS' job for them – they have enough well-paid communicators who should be doing that. In the absence of that, someone needs to step up to the plate. Ergo, this column was born.

When I referred a friend the other day to efforts of the African Union and ECOWAS around youth initiatives, she was taken aback that so much had been happening and she didn't know. I explained to her that there are too many people (justifiably) complaining that ECOWAS and the AU are not working that it eventually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Both ECOWAS and the AU must be seen to be working. In the same way that we say justice must be seen to be done, these regional groupings must follow suit. Else, people will consign their efforts and good deeds to a footnote.

Last week, I bemoaned a lack of convergence between the ECOWAS Communique and the AU one, immediately jumping the gun that ECOWAS was embarked on some duplicitous move to sign the EPAs. While I viscerally feel something is not quite right, I believe it is more institutional than anything.

This is because as much as the AU is the superintending organisation on all matters-continental, including that of the Continental Free Trade Area by 2017, ECOWAS as a regional economic community recognised by the AU(AU-REC) has autonomy to follow through its own programmes. What probably needs to happen more of is a synergy between these two institutions on matters economic and political. This evidently includes referencing the Abuja Treaty at any opportune moment. After all, ECOWAS will not remain ECOWAS indefinitely; the idea is to collapse UEMOA and ECOWAS into a West African Economic Community by 2034. Simply put: ECOWAS must remember this, and act accordingly!

That said, statements by institutional set-ups, such as the Conference of African Ministers on Integration(COMAI), which was institutionalized back in 2006, must equally step up to the plate. In the last statement of the Sixth Ordinary Session held in Mauritius in April, a number of important recommendations were made.

These included the necessity of developing “common convergence policies in key sectoral integration areas”; empowering the regional and Continental institutions “in order to enable them play their role in coordinating and accelerating the integration process…” In addition, the Declaration speaks to the necessity of “national forums to discuss issues of integration with the various stakeholders, including, private sector, media, youth associations, and civil society.”

If the 7th ECOWAS Fair is not an exemplification of what these national forums are supposed to represent, I am not quite sure what is. Remarkably, the Vice-President of the ECOWAS Commission Dr.Macintosh, as per reports, was encouraging participants on ECOWAS Day at the on-going Seventh ECOWAS Trade Fair at the Ghana International Trade Fair Centre at La in Accra, that once a business plan was cleared, the ECOWAS Bank of Investment and Development could provide funds from either its own resources or from other sources such as the African Development Bank.

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In 2009, in his capacity as a “Do More Talk Less Ambassador” of the 42nd Generation—an NGO that promotes and discusses Pan-Africanism--Emmanuel gave a series of lectures on the role of ECOWAS and the AU in facilitating a Pan-African identity. Emmanuel owns "Critiquing Regionalism" (http://critiquing-regionalism.org). Established in 2004 as an initiative to respond to the dearth of knowledge on global regional integration initiatives worldwide, this non-profit blog features regional integration initiatives on MERCOSUR/EU/Africa/Asia and many others. You can reach him on [email protected] / Mobile: +233-268.687.653.