CRG Seminar: The Economic Community of West African States at fifty: Edward Blyden and the road towards a people centered regional body
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Edward Blyden, the father of Pan-Africanism and African unification placed individuals at the entre of his ideas. He sought the unification of West Africa through, initially, the interaction of peoples across the region. He saw unification being fostered in West African schools, social settings, churches and mosques. Cultural interaction would produce the consciousness of a West African community, and this consciousness would be the bedrock of his hoped for West African state. With decolonization, Blyden’s mode of state creation was displaced and replaced with a top-down, state directed approach that ignored the need for a people-centred approach. Although ECOWAS adopted protocols on the free movement of persons, its 1975 constitutive treaty made no room for citizen participation. The ECOWAS Revised Treaty of 1993, however, reflects a shift in thinking as the members seem to have embraced the principles Blyden articulated in the 19th century through new ECOWAS structures that see a role for its citizens in regional integration.
This seminar is organised by the Collaborative Research Group Governance, entrepreneurship and inclusive development.
Speaker
Kofi Oteng Kufuor has been professor of law in the University of East London since 2006. He has degrees from the University of Science and Technology in Ghana, the London School of Economics and the University of Warwick. He is the author of 5 monographs including The African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement: The Development of a Regional Rules-Based Trading Order (2024) Routledge; African Unification: Law, Problems and Prospects (2016) Carolina Academic Press: Durham: North Carolina; The African Human Rights System: Origin and Evolution, (2010) Palgrave Macmillan: New York; The Institutional Transformation of the Economic Community of West African States, (2006) Ashgate: Aldershot, England and World Trade Governance and Developing Countries: the GATT/WTO Code Committee System, (2004, Chatham House Monograph) Blackwell: London, for the Royal Institute of International Affairs. He is General Editor of the African Journal of International and Comparative Law, and he is on the editorial board of the Global Community Yearbook of International Law & Jurisprudence and Land.
Date, time and location
19 November 2025
15:00-17:00
Herta Mohrgebouw / Faculty of Humanities, Witte Singel 27a, 2311 BG Leiden
Room 0.31
Registration
Posted on 21 October 2025, last modified on 21 October 2025