Prior to the arrival of the forces of colonialism, the West African sub-region was dotted by a host of kingdoms and empires among the Ashanti Kingdom to the Sokoto Caliphate, the Kanem Bornu, Samory Touré's Guinea, the Oyo, the Benin and the Dahomey Kingdom, among others. [...] The rapidity with which military rule spread from Togo to encompass all the other countries of the sub-region, with the excep- tion of Côte d'Ivoire and Senegal, and the rapid, often violent regime turnover that the region witnessed in the period up to the late 1990s, is symptomatic of the crisis of governance that continues to afflict the area. [...] The project of reconciliation and reconstruction would, inevitably, involve close attention to the establishment of a new social contract between the state and society, the reconstruction of the state to redress the unidirectional retrenchment which it suffered during the adjustment years, and the provision of a new set of principles around which national energies 11 could be mobilised and which c. [...] Obviously, on the face of things at least, the easiest way to avert the possible outbreak of 'water wars' in the future will be to devise strategies for developing the full potentialities of the rivers in the wider framework of regional co-operation/integration in West Africa. [...] The situation was not helped by the indiscriminate removal of input subsidies, the lack of attention to the infrastructure needs of the farming communities, the inadequacy of marketing and financing institutions, and the difficulties posed by the ever-diminishing international terms of trade for primary commodity exporters.