Dissecting The Structural Constraints On Ecowas as A Regional Security Provider, 2010-2025

This article examines the structural constraints that have persistently limited the effectiveness of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) as a regional security provider between 2010 and 2025. The period under review culminated in an unprecedented institutional rupture: the formal withdrawal of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger from ECOWAS in January 2025, following a cascade of military coups and the formation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES). Drawing on qualitative data from twenty-five semi-structured interviews conducted at ECOWAS headquarters in Abuja with officials, government representatives, academics, and civil society actors, supplemented by thematic documentary analysis and current scholarship, the article maps three interrelated structural constraints and their interactive effects. These are: the resilience of state sovereignty norms that resist collective enforcement; chronic financing deficits that generate strategic dependence on external donors; and weak or inconsistent political will among member states. The article traces how these constraints operate as a mutually reinforcing cycle that produces the 'capability expectations gap' characterising ECOWAS's peace and security operations. It situates the ECOWAS experience within a comparative analysis of the African Union and the European Union, drawing on their respective experiences with internal financing and institutional design. The article concludes with a reform agenda centred on financial autonomy through innovative financing, incentive-differentiated compliance mechanisms, institutional mandate rationalisation, and pragmatic re-engagement with the AES states reforms that represent necessary, if not sufficient, conditions for ECOWAS to remain a credible and effective regional security architecture.