Anticipatory Institution-Building Through the African Atlantic Gas Pipeline in West Africa

How can infrastructure structure interstate co-operation when regional authority is contested? This article examines the African Atlantic Gas Pipeline (AAGP), a proposed gas corridor from Nigeria to Morocco. Drawing on documentary process tracing (2017–April 2026) and ten semi-structured interviews (2023–February 2026), it develops the 4-L framework: Liability, Legal Lock-in, Long-termism and Linkage. These mechanisms raise the expected costs of exit and non-compliance through material exposure, legal continuity, sequenced financial commitments, and conditional corridor access. Findings show differentiated activation. Legal ordering and Long-termism generate co-ordination and reversal costs through multi-state legal work, completed engineering studies, and committed preparatory resources. Liability and Linkage are embedded in the project's interconnection and access architecture, but their full effects remain pre-operational. The AAGP supports a middle-range account of how megaproject governance can sustain sector-specific co-operation under contested regional authority. Infrastructure Institutionalism conceptualises this as sector-specific institutional layering, not an alternative theory of regionalism.