14. How Does Communication Enrich Integration Policies

When public institutions focus excessively on their survival or on their reproduction, they run the risk of progressively distancing themselves from reality and of not serving the citizens and their communities. The West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) took the initiative to encourage discussions focused on the necessary complementarity among three key players in regional integration who until now have ignored each other or, at least, have not understood each other: researchers, decision makers and journalists. This chapter is a retrospective critique of the experience of an encounter among stakeholders coming from different social areas with different approaches and interests and who nevertheless need to cooperate in their everyday professional lives. This chapter draws lessons from this three-way discussion and explores how these players—those who design and implement public policies, researchers and journalists—can invent and lead discussion forums in order to influence policies that are closer to citizens’ reality and expectations and that accompany integration.