Cross‑border co‑operation in West Africa: Bridging the gap between research and policy

Chapter 1 starts by looking at West Africa’s future, where rapid population growth is expected to continue over the next two generations. Settlement basins will continue to densify and expand, reaching across borders, and there will be more and larger cities. As a result, cross-border interaction will increase naturally regardless of the level of support from national and regional policy. The chapter will then look briefly at the cross-border dynamics developed by local actors which share a number of common factors, namely: bypassing institutional initiatives and dealing with the abuse of power, absence or shortcomings of those in charge of applying regulatory controls. It lastly addresses the potential of the paper’s research and the advantage of actively narrowing the gap between bottom-up regionalisation dynamics and top-down regionalism, while considering the time-lags frequently experienced in improving public policy.