ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the impact of bilateral free trade agreements with large trading blocs on economic integration in Africa. It focuses on the future of African economic integration in the growing regional trade arrangements, which is now a feature of the neoliberal-driven world trading system. The chapter provides a brief overview of the history of the Doha Round negotiations and the consequent evolution of regional trade agreements in the world trading system. Multilateral free trade is touted to provide opportunities that ensure optimum distribution of multiple global resources, with a view to improving human well-being. The period immediately following the independence of many African countries in the 1960s was marked by a drive towards African unity. Ab initio, the ideology of pan-Africanism emphasised strong identification with the ongoing anticolonial struggles in the last vestiges of colonial rule and also against the apartheid rule in Southern Africa.
