Governance issues and the Covid-19 Pandemic in West Africa : Are there linkages?

The main of this paper was to contribute to a better understanding of the possible link or interaction between the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in West Africa as proxied by the rate of infection and the state of governance in the ECOWAS countries. More specifically, the paper seeks 1) to determine the relationship between governance indicators and the number of covid-19 confirmed cases by the end of September 2021; 2) to determine the relationship between two control variables i.e. tourism arrival and external debt, and the number of confirmed cases. The data used was collected for the fifteen members of the ECOWAS community over two years 2020 and 2021. Correlation and multiple regression analysis were used to assess the strength of association between the variables and possible causation respectively. The study found a positive and significant correlation (0.6) between all the governance variables with the exception of political stability. In addition, the correlation coefficients for tourism arrival, external debt, and the infection rate are above 0.7 indicating a strong association. The study also found that the governance indicators did not significantly impact the covid-19 infection rate in the ECOWAS region. However, the number of tourists’ arrival as well as per capita external debt impacted significantly the rate of covid-19 infection in the ECOWAS Member States. It is therefore recommended that more stringent actions be taken to reinforce safety measures at all entry points in the ECOWAS region. Development partners are urged to pay close attention to the reliability of the covid-19 confirmed cases to ensure that data collected is not manipulated just to attract foreign resources