This study diagnoses the reasons for the failure to achieve economic and monetary union (EMU) in the Economic Community of West African States. Economists and political scientists have proffered answers to this ‘why’ question from the prisms of their respective disciplines. They argue that the macroeconomic structures and conditions of member states, and the power dynamics in West Africa, make an EMU a fundamentally misconceived project that is bound to fail in the absence of sustained macroeconomic convergence. Since an EMU fundamentally rests on three mutually reinforcing pillars: economics, politics, and law, this study complements the literature by venturing a legal and institutional view on why the EMU has failed. In doing so, the study defines the ‘Ecozone’ as the domain for the EMU and develops the corpus of Ecozone law by synthesising the various elements comprising that law and its institutional architecture into a systematic framework for analysis.

The analysis demonstrates clearly that Ecozone law is a collection of loosely-formulated and unenforceable general statements of union law, lacking the essential legal and institutional qualities necessary to make it a functional legal system both in theory and in practice. The study identifies and analyses ten issues – both de jure and de facto – which undermine the effectiveness of Ecozone law and its ability to support the establishment of an EMU. The analysis concludes that the Ecozone lacks an enabling legal environment for EMU. This is a key explanatory factor in the failure of the Ecozone as efforts to achieve sustained macroeconomic convergence, or to make EMU-related political commitments credible, have been undermined by the absence of an enabling and enforceable legal and institutional framework. In closing, the study recommends the reform of Ecozone law along a path that ensures constitutional and institutional coherence. It further recommends the restructuring of the Ecozone into a digital currency area, with the Eco as digital public money circulating in parallel to national currencies. This will compel macroeconomic convergence in the Ecozone consistent with the endogeneity thesis of optimum currency areas.

The main contributions of this study are threefold. First, it synthesises the various elements that comprise Ecozone law into a coherent framework. This is novel because literature on EMU law in West Africa is sparse and the few strands of literature that exist have generally treated its various elements in siloes, without an in-depth exploration of the linkages and conflicts among them. Secondly, in expounding the corpus of Ecozone law, using the European Union’s law on EMU as primary comparator, this study has identified and analysed the weaknesses in the legal and institutional framework of the Ecozone so that reform efforts may be targeted and precise. For completeness, the study has suggested reforms that leverage on the advancements in financial technology. Third, the study contributes to the completion of the scholarly investigation into the reasons for the present failure of the Ecozone by providing the missing legal and institutional perspective to complement the economic and political views on the subject. Undergirding these three contributions is the fact that this study joins the emerging literature on EMUs in Africa and is therefore a useful addition to the body of existing knowledge on EMUs.