ECOWAS at 50: The principles and practice of disabled-inclusion in governance in West Africa

ECOWAS celebrates her 50th anniversary in 2025 in regional peace building, security, and governance efforts among others. Within this period, however, the principles and practices of the Commission on various subjects have been critically evaluated by observers, scholars and experts with mixed results. In relation to inclusive governance, the focus on evaluation has been excessively focused on women and youths while summarily neglecting PwDs. Men, women, youths and children under the category of PwDs are hardly targeted for such interventions and social empowerment. The simple evidence of this neglect is the lack of social and public infrastructures in schools, hospitals, religious worship centres, roads, public transport and road networks across the continent that do not factor in the plight of PwDs. The study thus explores the existing principles and practice of inclusive governance as it concerns PwDs in the ECOWAS region and also examines the same principles and practice among member states. Findings showed that whereas ECOWAS member states like Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Senegal have national policies driving inclusive governance for disabled persons, there has been no explicit policy by the ECOWAS community. The community adopted the Regional Action Plan on Disability in West Africa 2022-2030 to ensure a more comprehensive and institutional approach to inclusive governance for disabled people in 2024 but remains to be seen what will be made of it. The study recommends that the Community establishes a department to implement the various policies that have been initiated to help the inclusion of disabled persons in governance in west Africa.