ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the pattern of post-colonial regionalism in Central Africa with a particular emphasis on the dominant formalized multi-purpose regional organization - the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS). While ECCAS faces many challenges, such as the overlaps with other organizations, scarcely integrated economies, diverging interests between member states, the absence of national leadership, and a lack of resources, it has managed to persist as a pillar of the regional order. This contribution seeks to explain the persistence of a stunted regional organization through the entanglements with other institutional actors. ECCAS is thus contextualized as central Africa’s institutional nexus between multiple layers of inter-regionalisms: In a diachronic manner with its predecessors, in a bifurcated manner with overlapping organizations, in a hierarchical manner with the continental integration process, and in an external manner with the European Union and other international actors.
