ABSTRACT
International interest in economic integration is spawning new regional initiatives in every continent. Africa does not lag the world in setting up these arrangements; in fact the world’s oldest customs union exists in Southern Africa, and the list of both past and present multilateral economic agreements is probably longer than that of any other continent. Africa’s problem lies in setting up regional initiatives where both benefits for members and penalties for non-compliance are sufficiently substantial to ensure continuing cooperation. There are successful examples, notably the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) and the (Rand) Common Monetary Area (CMA), and some partially successful arrangements in francophone Africa, but Africa’s record of creating workable regional frameworks is poor.2 African policy-makers are nevertheless still searching for broader economic cooperation as a solution to small markets and generally weak economies. South Africa’s participation in an economic community centred on the Southern African Development Community (SADC), which it dominated even while it was excluded, is seen as the opportunity with greatest potential for success.
