ABSTRACT
Africa-wide economic integration programmes Since the beginning of the decolonization process in the 1960s, regional integration has been part and parcel of the strategy of Africa’s development. Regionalism in Africa began immediately after independence, championed mainly by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) (Qobo, 2007). This was in part a strategy to confront the last vestiges of colonialism on the continent while spurring political and economic progress. It was also seen as a political apparatus to address the power imbalances in the international economic cum political system. After independence, regional integration became the fulcrum of Africa’s development strategy. The ideology of Pan-Africanism,1 which emphasizes continental unity and strong identification with ongoing anti-colonial struggles, was the linchpin of Africa’s developmental framework. The fragmentation of Africa into tiny, unviable nation states led African leaders to embrace regional integration as a central element of their development strategy immediately after independence. The diminutive size and almost universally primary production structure of a typical African economy provided the rationale for pursuing mutually beneficial economic cooperation and regional integration, particularly among adjacent states. Regional integration was viewed as a vehicle for achieving efficient industrialization with dynamic neighbourhood effects and regional spill-overs. In order to realize these benefits from integration, African countries, from the 1960s to the mid-1980s, enthusiastically established a legion of regional and sub-regional organizations. Besides economic motivations, Pan-African political aspiration for continental identity, unity and lucidity influenced the early drives for regional integration in Africa. The pursuit of these ideals derives mainly from the desire to overcome the vestiges of Africa’s colonial past. Over time, the political aspiration of African unity reinforced the desire for regional and inter-regional economic cooperation as integral building blocks for continental cooperation and economic development. In concrete terms, in the post-independence era, the ECA was the earliest advocate of regional cooperation in Africa. Right from its inception, the ECA
considered the fragmented political geography of Africa as a serious impediment to the realization of its development goals. However, the idea of an immediate regional market, embracing all African countries, was considered impractical. Thus, promoting economic cooperation on sub-continental scale became an essential element of the ECA’s approach. The ECA’s efforts cut across the colonial francophone-anglophone divide. To this end, it sponsored several intergovernmental meetings of all the then 14 independent West African countries in 1966. Meetings were held successively in Niamey, Accra, Dakar and Monrovia to consider the draft Articles of Association for West African Economic Cooperation prepared by the ECA Secretariat. However, in spite of these efforts, the West African region remained divided between francophone and anglophone enclaves (Adedeji, 2002). The limited attempts to overcome the barrier were concentrated at the bilateral or trilateral levels, e.g. the Senegal-Gambia, Nigeria-Niger and Ghana-Guinea-Mali experiments, but these were not successful. The idea of African integration came into its own in 1963 with the establishment of the OAU. Although the purposes of the OAU were primarily political, the organization eventually entered the realm of economic integration in 1991 with the signing of the treaty establishing the African Economic Community (AEC) by the heads of state and government (Kimunguyi, 2006). The way for this treaty had been prepared by the Lagos Plan of Action (LPA) and the Final Act of Lagos (FAL), both in 1980. The LPA had envisaged the formation of an African common market by the year 2000 which was to be achieved in stages: first the formation of free trade areas, and then later a common market and an economic union. The same process was to be followed in the three sub-regions identified by the Plan: Eastern and Southern Africa, Central Africa and West Africa. The aim of the AEC specified in the 1991 Treaty is to promote economic, social and cultural development as well as African economic integration in order to increase self-sufficiency and endogenous development and to create a framework for development, mobilization of human resources and material. The AEC further aims to promote cooperation and development in all aspects of human activity with a view to raising the standard of life of Africa’s people, maintaining economic stability and establishing a close and peaceful relationship between member states. The Treaty provides for the AEC to be set up through a gradual process, which would be achieved by coordination, harmonization and progressive integration of the activities of existing and future sub-regional economic communities (RECs) in Africa. The RECs are regarded as the building blocks of the AEC. The existing RECs are: the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU), the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), the Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The implementation of the AEC Treaty and the establishment of the AEC have been envisaged as a six-stage process lasting 34 years (UNECA, 2008).
