ABSTRACT
The chapter focuses on the complex nature of current regional organizations in Africa, their overlaps and competition, and presents the following two core arguments. (1) The emergence of competing projects of region-building with multiple types of overlap was unavoidable, given the sheer size of the African continent and its political and social heterogeneity, but also the strong involvement of global actors in the construction of Africa’s international system. (2) Different strategies to deal with overlap, on the contrary, result both from different assessments of the function of regions (between global and African actors), and from competing regional identities (between different African actors).
