On December 04, 2022, the sixty-second ordinary session of the Conference of Heads of State and Government of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was held in Abuja, Federal Republic of Nigeria. This meeting took place under the chairmanship of Umaro Sissoco Embalo, President of the Republic of Guinea-Bissau, and current President of the Conference.

The 62nd ECOWAS Conference instructed “the Ministerial Committee to continue seeking consensual solutions on all outstanding issues with a view to creating harmonious conditions for the launch of ECO”. Indeed, during the meeting, the question of the single currency, which is slow to see the light of day, was addressed by the member countries of the sub-regional organization.

The Conference took note of the conclusions of the meeting of the Ministerial Committee on the ECOWAS Single Currency Programme. In reality, the ECO is the name of a single currency project of the fifteen ECOWAS countries dating from the 1960s. Its implementation was planned for the third quarter of 2020. However, it has been postponed indefinitely to replace the CFA franc (UEMOA) in the eight member states of the West African Economic and Monetary Union.