The long-held dream of integrating Africa economically remains elusive, and new strategies are required for realising it, writes guest columnist Nkululeko Khumalo ahead of an African Union meeting on the subject which begins in Abidjan on May 19.
While some modest achievements have been realised, the goal of having integrated and well functioning regional economic communities (RECs) that are able to foster economic interdependence remains elusive in Africa.
Against this backdrop the African Union (AU) will host the third Conference of African Ministers in charge of Integration (COMAI III) from May 19 to 23 in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire in a bid to accelerate continental integration – a longstanding objective of the AU and its predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU).
With at least 14 regional communities and most countries belonging to at least two, regional integration in Africa is too complex and confusing. As documented in many studies, multiple and overlapping memberships in RECs have created a complicated web of competing commitments which, combined with different rules, result in high costs for trade between African countries and work against beneficial integration.
This situation has been exacerbated by the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) negotiations between the European Community and the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries (ACP) grouping.
The EPAs, negotiated under the aegis of the Cotonou Agreement which seeks to replace non-reciprocal export preferences that ACP countries have been receiving from the EU with regional reciprocal free trade arrangements from January 2008 onwards, are meant to align the parties' trade regime with World Trade Organization rules. Though EPAs are meant to promote regional integration, among other aims, their immediate impact has been the further fragmentation of existing regional economic bodies across Africa - except for the East African Community.
Clearly the current state of economic integration (or disintegration to be precise) in Africa requires new strategies and approaches if the vision of a virtually borderless continent in economic terms is to be realized.
The erstwhile OAU, through the Abuja Treaty (1991), envisaged the creation of an African Economic Community by 2028. In terms of this plan five (north, south, east, west and central) regional economic communities would serve as building blocks towards the creation of the continent-wide community.
However, the EPAs have, if anything, demonstrated that existing regional communities are not only too many but are largely too shallow and therefore unlikely to lead to continental integration as envisaged by the Abuja Treaty -- unless the AU plays a strong coordinating and monitoring role.
Unsurprisingly, the need to revise the Abuja Treaty is one of the recommendations of COMAI I and COMAI II since the treaty's integration timeframes have become unrealistic.
In principle, the AU as a continental body is better placed to promote the bigger picture – the economic integration of the whole continent and not just regions, individual countries often being too preoccupied with narrow national interests.
To succeed, the AU will have to deal with massive challenges hampering regional integration efforts in Africa. These include: lack of national mechanisms to coordinate, implement, and monitor integration policies and programmes; inability to make integration objectives, plans, and programmes part of national development frameworks; failure to provide equitable distribution of integration's costs and benefits; insufficient technical and financial support to regional integration programmes; and lack of compatibility among RECs which are supposed to promote the goals of a continent-wide community.
Further, it is important for the AU and individual RECs to ensure that Africa's integration agenda is compatible with the obligations these countries have to external trading partners.
It is also important for the African economic integration process, especially in the area of trade, to deepen and be ahead of other multilateral processes in order to allow African countries to speak with one voice and be able to respond appropriately to challenges such as the one provided by the EPAs.
This will not be an easy task and will require the AU to build its own institutional capacity to shoulder this responsibility.
The current state of instability and uncertainty, especially in Southern Africa, about how existing RECs will shape out in response to EPAs provides a unique opportunity for the AU to assert its leadership and to provide and implement a clear plan towards continental economic integration.
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It is encouraging that the AU seems to have risen to the occasion and has already held two conferences of ministers in charge of regional integration since 2006. While acknowledging the significance of recgional communities as central pillars for achieving continental integration, both conferences emphasized the need to rationalize and harmonize their policies, activities, and programmes with a view to accelerating the broader integration process.
A moratorium on the recognition of new RECs is already in place and eight of the existing ones have been recognised as building blocks of the African Economic Community. However, the AU can succeed only if it gets maximum support from individual countries and RECs. Therefore the institutionalisation of the conference of integration ministers is a welcome development and we hope their resolutions will be taken seriously and get implemented.
Nkululeko Khumalo is Senior Researcher in trade policy at the South African Institute of International Affairs.
