Hon. Benjamin Kalu, Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, on Tuesday sought a strategic shift toward digital payment platforms and improved infrastructure to boost trade in the West African sub-region.
The lawmaker stated this while speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the ongoing First Extraordinary Session of the ECOWAS Parliament in Abuja, with a theme “Deepening Regional Integration through Infrastructure Development and Trade Facilitation”.
‘While we struggle with whose head will be on the currency, I think it’s about time we begin to think about digital currency. Digital payment platforms. So that what we couldn’t do with paper notes, currencies, we can do through digital payment platforms.
“At the moment, Africa, especially the ECOWAS, is trading more with other parts of the world, more than we’re trading with ourselves.
“Our intra-trade is giving us about 16% increase in the year 2025, while the trade we are having among ourselves is only at the paltry percentage of about 11%. It ought not to be. And this is because infrastructure is still a problem between one country and the other within the ECOWAS region,” Kalu, who is also a member of the ECOWAS Parliament, said.
According to him, digital payment platforms would significantly reduce reliance on dollar-denominated transactions, which currently cost the region billions of dollars annually.
“Most of our dollar-denominated transactions are costing the ECOWAS region about five billion dollars in charges. We’re going to save that,” he said.
Kalu expressed concerns over the various corridors that are supposed to be opened and sustained to increase the trade, but that hasn’t happened.
He attributed delays to excessive bureaucratic bottlenecks at border points, stressing that delays in clearing goods remain a major barrier to trade.
“These trucks, after 14 hours, get to the borders and stay another 14 hours before they are cleared. It’s affecting trade,” he said.
On concerns that digital payments could sidestep the issue of inflation and currency convergence, Kalu said that increased intra-regional trade and production would help reduce inflationary pressures.
“If we start trading with ourselves, productivity and production in Africa will increase, and the ripple effect is that inflation goes down.
“If I convert cocoa farms into chocolate factories, what I will export will be chocolate, not cocoa. If I convert lithium mines into battery factories, I can exchange batteries instead of raw minerals.
“Let’s fix the infrastructure, fix the payment system, and trade will boom in ECOWAS,” Kalu added.
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