Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission hosts Technical Validation Workshop on the detailed Design Study of the Abidjan-Lagos Corridor Highway

The Transport Directorate of the ECOWAS Commission is hosting a 3-day technical validation workshop for the Detailed Design Study (DDS) of the Abidjan-Lagos Corridor Highway in Lagos, Nigeria, from Wednesday, 11th September to Friday, 13th September 2024.

The Abidjan-Lagos Corridor Highway Development Project (ALCHDP) aims to construct a 6-lane dual carriage highway from Abidjan in Cote d’Ivoire, through Ghana, Togo, Benin to Lagos in Nigeria. The five Corridor Countries have entrusted the ECOWAS Commission as the Implementing Agency in the interim, to design, procure, mobilize financing and construct the Highway. In the long term, a supra-national Corridor Authority, known as the Abidjan-Lagos Corridor Management Authority (ALCOMA) which will be operationalized to take over the project on behalf of the corridor Countries.

The first Phase of this Project involves among other things, alignment definition and feasibility and preliminary designs studies for the 1,028km road which was completed by the three Engineering Design Consultants and validated by the Corridor Member States in November 2022, after a substantial delay because of the COVID-19 pandemic. These firms went on to develop the Detailed Design of the Highway.

Project Directors and Engineers from the five Corridor Member Countries accompanied Engineers from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) including the Project Unit and Technical Assistants to hold initial technical reviews of the Detailed Design Reports and Drawings within the context of the broader corridor objectives and the specific country peculiarities. These were done through national-level pre-validation workshops across the five (5) Abidjan-Lagos Corridor Member States of Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire from June 18 to 24, 2024.

The Reports and recommendations from the national pre-validation workshops have been collated and consolidated with comments from the ECOWAS Technical Assistance team and will form the basis for the validation of the Detailed Design of the entire Abidjan Lagos Corridor Highway.

This final technical validation workshop marks a crucial phase in concluding the technical studies of the project’s development and will involve an extensive technical validation session, where the Project Directors and Engineers of the five (5) participating Corridor Member Countries (CMCs) will review and grant their final approval to the Detailed Design Studies (DDS) and Technical Specifications essential for advancing the development of the Highway Project to the next stage.

This Technical Validation Workshop will have in attendance engineers from the Project Implementation Unit (PIU) of the Abidjan Lagos Corridor Highway Development Project, the Directorates of Transport and Environment, of the ECOWAS Commission, the ECOWAS Project Preparation and Development Unit (PPDU) and the CEP, Representatives of Ministries in charge of Infrastructure, Project focal point, Directors and Corridor Member Country (CMC) Engineers, who are members of the PIU of Corridor Member Countries (CMCs), Development Partners and Stakeholders including African Development Bank and European Union.

Also in attendance will be project Engineering Consultants comprising SETEC International, PEARL Consultants, SCET Tunisie and SOFRECO the Technical Assistant to the ALCHDP and the media

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).