ABSTRACT
The most sophisticated and the most successful attempt at sub-regional economic integration, the East African Community of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, proved only to have a ten-year life. Africa and other regions of the developing world do however have special problems in the weak state of most of the economies involved in the process of co-operation. In the light of precedent the prognosis for the latest African venture in sub-regional co-operation, the Southern African Development Co-ordination Conference, may not seem too hopeful. In the case of Central Africa, the jointly-owned corporations were designed to preserve, after the demise of the Federation in 1963, interterritorial co-operation in the fields of electric power, civil air transport, railways and agricultural research. Both the East Africa Community and the Central African common services may be seen as legacies of the British colonial past in the sense that they reflect patterns of co-operation before independence.
