Ghana in Search of Regional Integration Agenda 100 Beyond advocacy, youth organisations in Ghana through fora, workshops and seminars can connect with other youth organisations within West Africa to discuss issues relating to sub-regional integration. An example is the West African Youth Network(WAYN), which was created in March 2001, in direct response to the rise in violent activities and the continuous marginalisation and exploitation of young people in West Africa. Such platforms will play a crucial role to help youth organisations in Ghana to network across borders, share information about national and regional development, mobilise people to support integration, and develop common platform for action and advocacy strategy. Lack of information on details and the status of West African integration can be addressed from an information management perspective. For example, most sub­regional and regional organisations and secretariats have fixed calendars and schedules. Without access to such calendars and time frames youth organisations in Ghana cannot convene before relevant integration events in order to prepare themselves to contribute meaningfully to the issue on board neither can they be informed about decisions made at sub-regional meetings because of the very little information put in the public domain(especially in the print media) to educate Ghanaians about decisions reached at ECOWAS meetings. There is therefore the need for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Co-operation in collaboration with other stakeholders such as the National Youth Council to disseminate agenda and recommendation of sub-regional meetings in a format that makes interesting reading without compromising technical issues. This can be pursued within the framework on current debate on the need to widen the space for foreign policy making and implementation. Added to this is the need to involve the youth in the drafting of policies on regional integration. Currently, in Ghana, youth organisations are to a very large extent left out in the process of determining policies and programmes for regional integration within the West African sub-region. This is not just detrimental to efforts at regional integration in West Africa but also works against the need to integrate the youth into the mainstream of public policy-making as a way of developing or mentoring them. In addition, youth organisations especially those in the universities must be effectively encouraged to research in various aspects of sub-regional integration. Such research should be more than mere collection of information; it should be geared towards improving the lives of people and meeting the challenges of regional integration. The research findings and results have to be simplified, translated into understandable languages, and disseminated across borders through journals and creation of websites. Findings must also be effectively communicated to policy makers and efforts made to ensure that recommendations are implemented.