organise a broad array of cultural and sports events under the auspices of the body, including the CEDEAO Cup in football, the 2012 ECOWAS Games and the Miss CEDEAO beauty pageant. The Community Heads of State and Government adopted African Traditional Wrestling as the Community Sport, and through its Specialised Agency in charge of youth and sports development, the Ouagadougou-based ECOWAS Youth and Sports Development Centre (EYSDC), has consistently organised the yearly ECOWAS African Wrestling Tournament mainly in Dakar (Senegal) and Niamey ((Niger) based on a harmonized African wrestling code. The Community, through the EYSDC, also organized 2 editions of the ECOWAS International Cycling tour, taking close to 100 riders from all member States, from Lagos to Accra and then from Lagos o Abidjan. In addition to the sports and well-being objective of the tour, the race also served to demonstrate and put into practice the ECOWAS protocol on free movement of goods and persons. In 2019, the EYSDC instituted the ECOWAS Abuja International Marathon. The first edition brought together international marathoners from West Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia and Cameroon. Similarly, the Community, through its specialised agency, promotes regional sports development by offering sponsorship to regional sports federations and specialized disciplines such as the West African Deaf Sports Union ((WADSU), the West African Liaison Office of the International Council for Military Sports (WALO-CISM), the Region 2 of the African Athletics Federation, the West African University Games (WAUG), among others. Economic integration West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA) The West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU, also known as UEMOA from its name in French, Union économique et monétaire ouest-africaine) is an organisation of eight, mainly francophone West African states within the ECOWAS, previously colonies of French West Africa, that were dominated otherwise by Anglophone heavyweights like former British colonies Nigeria and Ghana. It was established to promote economic integration among countries that share the CFA franc as a common currency. UEMOA was created by a Treaty signed at Dakar, Senegal, on 10 January 1994, by the heads of state and governments of Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Togo. On 2 May 1997, Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony, became the organisation's eighth (and only non-francophone) member state. UEMOA is a customs union and currency union between the members of ECOWAS. Its objectives include: Greater economic competitiveness, through open markets, in addition to the rationalisation and harmonisation of