President Bola Tinubu has called on West African leaders to harness the region’s youthful population and abundant natural resources to drive economic transformation through industrialisation, education and innovation.
According to a statement released by the President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga’.
Speaking at the inaugural West Africa Economic Summit (WAES) in Abuja on Saturday, Tinubu described West Africa’s vibrant youth population as its greatest asset but warned that it could quickly become a liability without corresponding investments in skills development, digital infrastructure and productive enterprise.
“No one country can do this alone. Our prosperity depends on regional supply chains, energy networks and data frameworks. We must design them together or they will collapse separately,” the President said.
Tinubu, who chairs the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government, emphasised the urgency of dismantling trade barriers, noting that with intra-regional trade still below 10 per cent, the sub-region must “coordinate or collapse” in the global economic race.
He also urged West African countries to move beyond exporting raw materials and prioritise value-added industries. “The era of ‘pit to port’ must end. We must turn our mineral wealth into domestic economic value jobs, technology and manufacturing,” he added.
The President called for actionable outcomes from the summit, including improved ease of doing business, enhanced intra-regional trade, better infrastructure connectivity and innovative solutions to lift citizens from poverty to prosperity.
