Pan-Africanism and Regional Integration
Regional integration has been a dominant process in African efforts to build multilateral institutions for development and economic coordination. Since the 1960s, African countries have invoked the importance of forging close economic cooperation to promote growth and development, overcome the impediments of political fragmentation, and increase Africa’s competitiveness with the rest of the world. Meeting these objectives has entailed the construction of sub-regional and continental mechanisms for integration.
Throughout the four decades of regional integration schemes, African countries have sought to reconcile national and regional priorities against the backdrop of competing demands and expectations. Despite the broad consensus on the benefits of integration, there has been a mixed record of national commitment to regional institutions. Myriad developmental challenges accompanying state- and nation-building processes have stymied regional initiatives, saddling most of Africa with weak integration arrangements. Just as significantly, attempts to build regional integration schemes in Africa have oscillated between sub-regional and continental domains, raising profound questions about the geographical reach of regionalism. At the core of this problem is the issue of how to construct regional institutions, including defining memberships, and delineating responsibilities. Often regarded as the differences between minimalist and maximalist approaches to integration, these contrasting visions have framed the tenor and debates about the construction of integration schemes. Over the years, although there has emerged a tenuous compromise to simultaneously deepen integration at both levels, tensions still persist between sub-regionalism and continentalism.
This chapter provides a conceptual overview of key ideas, debates, and themes surrounding African regional integration schemes since the 1960s. It identifies two dominant phases in the construction of regional institutions (the first phase, 1960s–1990s, and the second phase, 1990s to recent times) to highlight various actors and processes that have animated the construction of continental and sub-regional institutions for economic integration and security collaboration. In addition, the chapter discusses the diverse roles of external actors and institutions in the articulation and support for the objectives of regional integration. In the concluding sections, the chapter will reflect on some of the key trends that may have an effect on future regional integration trends.
The First Phase of Regional Integration Schemes
Dominant scholarship in regionalism makes a distinction between regional cooperation and integration to differentiate between process and outcomes. Regional cooperation is a more flexible form of regionalism, denoting the coordination and coalescence of policies around common objectives. Regional integration, on the other hand, is perceived as a more weighty process of ceding sovereignty to new structures that acquire substantive roles that transcend cooperation. From this perspective, cooperation may be a process of attaining the ends of integration, a terminal stage where states lose some of the factual attributes of sovereignty.1 Economic analyses of the progressive stages of integration also mirror the dynamic evolution from limited cooperation arrangements in the trade arena to broad-based forms of economic integration. The classical economic characterization of integration identifies five stages: preferential trade area; a free trade area; a customs union; a common market; and an economic union. Throughout these stages, increased trade and market cooperation builds the foundations for substantive integration. In the penultimate stage of economic union, states lose autonomy and sovereignty over economic policy.2
African attempts at integration have operated within the overarching framework of incrementally accelerating the capacity for shared sovereignties and problem solving in the economic and political realms. However, attaining these objectives has been difficult, primarily because of the problems of translating lofty ideals into realities and the array of challenges associated with managing Africa’s economic, political, and geographical diversities. Mshomba has succinctly noted that ‘part of what makes economic integration in Africa an interesting subject for research … is the wide gap between the rhetorical support of politicians and the real state of economic integration’ (Mshomba 2000: 175; see also this volume).
Since colonial times, authors of integration schemes in Africa have sought to overcome the deficiencies of fragile and fragmented economies and polities, redoing the territorial and political tapestry established in the partition of Africa. Questions of economies of scale and political viability have always framed integration arrangements, reflecting a yearning for political and economic communities that transcend existing structures. Thus colonial governments crafted the formative regional economic integration schemes by seeking to create large unions among the geographically diverse entities. Some of these efforts involved the economic rationalization of colonial territories to foster trade, industrial development, infrastructural cooperation, and shared services. One of the largest colonial initiatives was the French bid to group 13 territories into two federations: the French West Africa (Afrique Occidental Française – AOF – made up of Côte d’Ivoire, Dahomey, French Guinea, French Sudan, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, and Upper Volta); and French Equatorial African Federation (Afrique Equitorial Française – AEF – made up of Chad, Central African Republic, Congo, Gabon, and Cameroon). Although each federation had its own currency and possessed the potential for political and economic development, France abandoned these schemes in 1958. Similarly, the East African Common Market Organization (EACMO, comprising Kenya, Tanganyika, and Uganda), the Central African Federation (CAF, comprising Nyasaland, Northern and Southern Rhodesia), and the Southern African Customs Union (SACU, comprising the Republic of South Africa, Bechuanaland, Basotholand, and Swaziland) were colonial bids to exploit geographical proximities to lay the foundations of trade, and monetary, industrial, and infrastructural cooperation.3
On the eve of decolonization in the late 1950s, the process of integration unleashed in Europe through the Treaty of Rome in 1957 had decisive influence on the trajectory of Africa’s regionalism. While spearheading the formation of the European Economic Community (EEC), France also induced its European partners to provide aid, technical assistance, and trade preferences to its former colonies. The Treaty of Rome allowed for the association of former colonies and created the first European Overseas Development Fund (FEDOM) to meet thei economic needs. Association membership was subsequently formalized in the Yaoundé Agreements of 1963 and 1969. Alongside these agreements, France galvanized its former colonies to form new regional blocs such as the Union Douaniere de L’Afrique de l’Ouest (UDEAO, the West African Customs Union), and the Union Africaine et Malgache de Coopération Économique (UAMCE, the Economic Cooperation of Africa and Malagasy). The expansion of EEC membership in the early 1970s enabled the transformation of Yaoundé Agreements into the Lomé Conventions that benefitted more African countries. One of the objectives of these Conventions was to help deepen integration in Africa through strengthening trade and aid relationships.4
French-led regionalism in the post-independence period gave rise to a countervailing movement led primarily by Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah for indigenous approaches to African integration. Invoking Pan-Africanist ideals, Nkrumah opposed the Association of African countries with the EEC on the grounds of balkanizing Africa to the detriment of continental integration. Instead, Nkrumah suggested a grand continental union government, which would reduce colonial fragmentation, promote political unity by diminishing sovereignty, and foster economic development. Ranged against this vision was the gradualist approach articulated notably by Francophone countries, Tanzania, and Nigeria, which proposed basing Africa’s integration schemes on sub-regional organizations. The gradualists saw economic integration beginning at the sub-regional level and proceeding in progressive stages until the attainment of a common market (Green and Seidman 1968).
The contest between continentalism and sub-regionalism was resolved in the formation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) when African states opted for both continental institutions for security and political integration based on respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity coexisting alongside sub-regional economic institutions and arrangements. Assisting the OAU in the articulation of broad-based, all-inclusive Pan-African integration was the United Nations (UN) Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), created in 1958. From its formation, the ECA assumed a strategic position in the debates about the parameters of African integration and development. At the OAU heads of state conference in 1963, the ECA prescribed a pragmatic and gradualist approach to integration in Africa, arguing that the economic background is ‘not yet ripe for a full economic union, quite apart from the political obstacles’ (UNECA 1963: 397–98).
In proposing ‘large-scale import substitution based on larger, sub-regional markets’, the ECA nonetheless pointed to the major obstacles to integration in Africa: poor communications capacity and the lack of ‘true national markets’ within individual states (UNECA 1963: 397–98). The gradualist vision articulated by the ECA was to shape the course of African integration for decades to come. With the OAU providing the larger umbrella for the advancement of continental ideals of unity, self-determination, and security, African sub-regions became the critical locus for experiments with regional cooperation. Starting from the mid-1960s, sub-regional organizations such as the East African Community (EAC), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), plus multiple others in West and Central Africa, evolved to articulate the economic component of regionalism that drew on geographical proximities and common objectives (Legum 1975; Meyers 1974).
Building on the inherited colonial trade and services institutions, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania led the process of East African integration. However, although hailed as a regional organization that mirrored the European experience, strains of nationalism appeared in the mid-1960s that were to impair integration. Beginning with the decision in 1966 to end the common monetary unit and the establishment of separate currencies, the three countries strayed away from the institutions and services erected by British authorities. In 1967 a Treaty of Cooperation created the EAC, whose objectives narrowly reflected the upsurge of nationalism and divergent ideological and political positions. Moreover, by vesting the decision-making power of the EAC in the hands of heads of state, the EAC became hostage to elite political consensus. When fissures surfaced over personalities, the gains from integration, and economic policies, the EAC collapsed in 1977 (Mead 1969; Mugomba 1978).
The disintegrative trends in East Africa belied the renewed momentum for integration in West Africa. Since the 1950s, West Africa had been a theatre of competing regional institutions. For a long time UDEAO, formed in 1959 and composed of most of the Francophone countries, dominated attempts to expand trade in the region. In 1972, however, Dahomey, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, and Mauritania replaced UDEAO with the Communauté Économique de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (CEAO, Economic Community of West Africa), whose objectives were improvement of infrastructure, acceleration of joint industrialization, and expansion of trade. Parallel initiatives culminated in the formation of the most comprehensive economic cooperative network to emerge in Africa, ECOWAS, in May 1975. Since the mid-1960s, the ECA and Nigeria had spearheaded bids for a West African Economic Community through relentless meetings and studies. With the formation of ECOWAS, regional states started to confront ways of diminishing the debilitating Francophone-Anglophone divide that had long dominated the region (Yansane 1977; Ojo 1980). In conception and modalities, ECOWAS echoed the gradualist and functionalist intentions of most of Africa’s regional integration schemes, putting emphasis on cooperation and harmonization in agriculture, trade, industry, transportation, finance, and labour mobility. Like the EAC, ECOWAS also accorded decision-making authority to the regional heads of state.
Beyond ECOWAS, Africa witnessed a spate of integration schemes in the 1980s, most of which built on sub-regional proximities and sought limited functional objectives. In Central and Equatorial Africa, the Union Dounaière et Économique de l’Afrique Centrale (UDEAC, the Customs and Economic Union of Central Africa) with a common currency and central bank, had dominated regionalism since 1964. However, UDEAC faced competition from the Communuaté Économique des Pays des Grand Lacs (CEPGL, the Economic Community of the Great Lakes Countries), which was created in 1976 and comprised Burundi, Rwanda, and Zaire. Nonetheless, the search for a new regional institution in 1983 produced the Communuaté Économique des États de l’Afrique Central (CEEAC, the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS)), incorporating UDEAC and CEPGL plus Equatorial Guinea and São Tomé and Príncipe (Robson 1985).
In East and Southern Africa, a new organization – the Preferential Trading Area (PTA) for Eastern and Southern Africa, the precursor to the Common Market for Eastern and Southern African Countries (COMESA) – was formed in 1981 to promote trade among 18 diverse states ranging from Egypt to Zambia. In Southern Africa, the efforts by the Frontline States neighbouring minority regimes led to the formation of the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC) to reduce dependence on South Africa and foster sectoral collaboration in mainly transport and communications.
By the mid-1980s, Africa had made remarkable progress in realizing the ECA’s vision of sub-regional entities as the bedrock of African integration, but amidst disappointing economic performance, the ECA alongside the OAU came up with a blueprint for Africa’s self-reliance and industrialization geared toward the domestic market. The Lagos Plan of Action passed by the OAU in 1980 made the creation of regional organizations as the centrepiece for self-reliant development. Thus, as the Plan noted, given the small size of African domestic markets, regional organizations would enlarge market size through the protection of infant industries and the attraction of foreign direct investment. Consistent with the idea expressed since the early 1960s, the ECA continued to be an advocate of economic collaboration among states that also remained beholden to their sovereignties. Such integration would entail a common external tariff, free movement of peoples and goods, and coordination of macroeconomic policies to ensure mutual consistency of fiscal, monetary, and external payments, and exchange rate policies of member states. As part of the Lagos Plan of Action, the ECA envisioned broadening the existing regional institutions – ECOWAS, ECCAS, and PTA – and creating new ones as the foundational blocs for Africa-wide economic community.5
Weaknesses in the First Phase of Integration Schemes
Despite the proliferation of regional integration schemes along functional and geographical lines, these arrangements faced profound questions of effectiveness in the 1980s. Although African countries pursued integration for the purposes of market enlargement, industrialization, sustained development and growth, and increased international competitiveness, for the most part it was difficult for these arrangements to translate these commitments into substantive goals. The growing scepticism about the contribution of regional integration to African development led some critics to contend that these institutions were unlikely to overcome the multiple obstacles confronting them in the short to medium term. Johnson (1991: 2) summarized the prevailing view, noting that ‘[t]he precise structure and details of the actual schemes being promoted have been unrealistic in the light of the costs and sacrifices that African governments and their citizens are willing to bear’.
A large part of the explanation for the lack of effectiveness was the unwillingness of governments to subordinate national political interests to long-term regional economic goals, a problem that was also compounded by the absence of a clear direction about the purposes of integration. In a review of ECOWAS in 1985, for instance, Robson argued that ‘the right problems are not being addressed in the right order … too much emphasis is being given to policy areas which are of little immediate relevance’ (Robson 1985: 614). Furthermore, he suggested that the main weaknesses of ECOWAS – that decisions adopted by the heads of state or by ministers almost invariably fail to be implemented by action at the national levels – could be explained by two main factors: ‘namely 1) the emphasis on trade liberalization; and 2) the lack of simultaneity in the obligations and benefits implied by the Community’s programme’ (ibid.: 616).
The uncertainty over the trade liberalization approach to integration that Robson raised with respect to ECOWAS signalled more widespread rethinking of the objectives of African integration in the late 1980s. Trade liberalization, the critics argued, was not feasible in the context of economic disparities among African countries and their dependence on foreign trade. This rethinking coincided with the debates that sought to diminish the applicability of European-style integration to African conditions because the European model was based on high levels of political and economic convergence.
While proponents of scaled-down regional integrative schemes cast doubt on the original ECA belief that African unity could be achieved through a slow process of functional integration, the ECA and OAU moved quickly from the mid-1980s toward reinvigoration of the idea of an African Common Market. Drawing from the Lagos Plan of Action, the ECA and OAU convened a series of exploratory meetings toward the formation of a continental economic community. These initiatives culminated in the Abuja Treaty of 1991 that proposed the gradual establishment of an African Economic Community (AEC) as an integral part of the OAU. According to its framers, the AEC was to be established over a 34-year period through coordination, harmonization, and progressive integration of the activities of the existing regional economic communities. Article 8(3) of the Treaty conferred on the Assembly of Heads of State and Government – the supreme organ of the AEC – the power to ‘give directives, coordinate, and harmonize the economic, scientific, technical, cultural, and social policies of member states’ (OAU 1991). Through the Abuja Treaty, African countries tried once more to reconcile the three decade-long contest between continentalism and sub-regionalism.
The Second Phase of Regional Integration Schemes
The renewed drive for integration captured in the Abuja Treaty came against the backdrop of continuous economic crises that had beset Africa in the 1980s. Weakening of national economies had invariably affected regional integration by denuding the ability of states to be effective participants in these arrangements. Besides, as most of Africa confronted severe debt crisis and embarked on externally directed Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) to reverse the precipitous economic decline, there was little attention paid to the coordination and harmonization of policies (see Williams, this volume). Yet, in the face of the implementation of SAPs and other donor-driven programmes, the political and economic circumstances for building the second phase of regional integration schemes began to take shape in the mid-1990s. Propelling the new impetus were reforms ushered by the collapse of state-run economies and protectionist economic policies that had been the foundations of the ECA’s inward-looking project on integration; some of these reforms saw increasing convergence of African economies. As a result, there was a marked shift in integration toward outward-looking market enlargement via liberalization and a more frontal approach to cooperation and coordination in functional areas such as large-scale infrastructure. Writing in the mid-1980s, Robson pointed to the potential role of enforced economic adjustment in underwriting new trends in African regionalism, which he suggested meant that ‘the lack of a will to give real priority to intra-regional adjustments and compromises, and to the development of practical integration strategies, could thereby conceivably prove to be less of an obstacle in the future than it has been during the past decade’ (Robson 1985: 621–22).
As economic reforms induced more convergence in policies, particularly the shift from states to markets, African countries seemed more prepared to harmonize policies in regional arrangements. Equally significant, the momentum toward political renewal unleashed by the end of the Cold War and the rise of the democracy movements across Africa bolstered the new era of regionalism.
Analytical efforts to understand the new phase spoke of ‘second-generation integration’ attempts that have gained strength since 1992. In contrast to the first generation that was propelled primarily by political leaders and senior technocrats, the new phase promised to engage multifaceted actors, particularly the private sector, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and parliaments in the integration agenda. As Mistry noted:
In principle, the new approach has abandoned the ossified, static, protected-fortress approach to integration among closed, state-run economies. It lays more emphasis on development of thematic integration (i.e. cooperating to save on large-scale infrastructure costs and achieving economies of scale) and open, rather than protected, market enlargement as a means of consolidating national economic policy shifts towards greater liberalization, market orientation, competitiveness, and efficiency.
(Mistry 2000: 559–60)
SADCC’s sectoral focus toward integration in the 1980s in part influenced the shift in the approach to regionalism that was captured in the second generation. Although transport and infrastructural coordination became SADCC’s major strength, when it was eventually transformed into the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in 1992, regional states worked to deepen sectoral coordination as they also embarked on the goal of regional integration for production. South Africa’s accession to SADC membership in 1994 enhanced the viability of the organization because of its large economy and contribution to the region’s gross domestic product (GDP). There was a realization that for market integration to succeed, it was important to focus on efficient cross-border infrastructure and services to allow for the free movement of persons, goods, and services. In 1996 SADC signed a trade protocol that phased out barriers among members as a preliminary step in the establishment of a Free Trade Area in 2008. The expansion of institutions around SADC, such as the SADC Parliamentary Forum, and the involvement of business groups in questions of integration made SADC the symbol of a new approach to regionalism (Jeffries 2007).
Similarly, after nearly a quarter century, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda re-established the East African Community (EAC) in 1999. Under the new arrangement, the EAC created a Common Market in 2010, plans to move into a Monetary Union by 2012, and eventually form a Political Federation. Although the timeframe for the Political Federation has not been fixed, the EAC has embarked on national consultations among the member states to gauge the readiness toward this goal. The three countries have also inaugurated a joint legislative assembly to handle regional policy matters and a regional court to settle cross-border disputes. In December 2006, Rwanda and Burundi were admitted as members of the EAC at the same time as the institution launched a 2006–10 regional development strategy.6
The 1990s also witnessed the revitalization and expansion of PTA through the formation of COMESA in 1994, the objective of which is to deepen regional integration through trade and investment. Since its formation, COMESA has expanded northwards to include Egypt, even as it shrunk southwards with the withdrawal of Lesotho, Mozambique, and Tanzania. To promote trade within the 19-member regional bloc, COMESA established three key instruments: COMESA Clearing House, COMESA Bank, and COMESA Travellers’ Cheques. In June 2009, COMESA reached a milestone when it launched a customs union. Coming about a year behind schedule, it aims at removing tariff barriers among member states and harmonizing barriers with third parties through the Common External Tariff (CET), which was adopted in May 2007.
In 1996, some members of COMESA – Kenya, Uganda, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Djibouti – decided to transform the moribund Intergovernmental Authority on Drought and Desertification (IGADD) into the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). Although the IGAD mandate has moved beyond alleviating drought and desertification in the Horn of Africa to address economic cooperation, it remains one of the weakest regional integration groups in Eastern Africa. In West Africa, CEAO – to which all Francophone countries except Togo belong – was replaced in 1994 by the more ambitious Union Économique et Monétaire Ouest-Africaine (UEMOA, the West African Monetary and Economic Union), which has increasingly competed with ECOWAS.
Central Africa has been slow in building functional regional integration schemes. Both the Abuja Treaty and the Constitutive Act of the African Union recognize ECCAS as one of the building blocks of the contemplated AEC. ECCAS has a membership of 11 countries: Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Rwanda, and São Tomé and Príncipe. However, the grandiose goals of ECCAS – which includes gradual elimination of trade barriers; free movement of persons, capital, goods, and services; and the development of capacities to maintain peace, security, and stability – have not been accomplished. ECCAS is weak because the Central African region is riddled with civil conflicts, authoritarian regimes, and a lack of internal dynamism for integration. Moreover, ECCAS competes with the Central African Economic and Monetary Union (CEMAC), a much smaller community (with a membership of only six states, all of which are also members of ECCAS), which has made better efforts at integration.
Regional Integration for Security
The promise of new regionalism underpinned by markets and similar political ideals and practices faced the countervailing trends of state failure and civil conflicts that were to preoccupy regional institutions in Africa in the 1990s. The disintegrative trends of civil conflicts have weakened many African sub-regions and markedly slowed down the pace of functional cooperation. Although optimistic thinkers believed that regional integration would strengthen national autonomy, few African regional institutions were prepared for the convulsion that engulfed Africa from the early 1990s. Since the 1960s, most of Africa’s regional schemes had given little attention to the dangers of state disintegration primarily because the norms of territorial integrity and sovereignty shielded these institutions from interference in domestic affairs.
The transformation of regional integration schemes into regional security mechanisms to stem the tide of civil wars began with an ECOWAS decision to send a Monitoring Group, ECOMOG, into Liberia in 1991. Throughout the almost decade-long engagement in the Liberian civil war, ECOWAS assumed security and peacekeeping functions under Nigerian leadership. During the same time, ECOWAS also intervened with mixed results in the civil war in Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau. These interventions sapped the resources of member countries and, in turn, produced regional strains that affected the agenda of integration (Arthur 2010; Adebajo 2002). In Southern Africa, SADC’s intervention in Lesotho by South Africa and Botswana in 1998, and the engagement of Angola, Namibia, and Zimbabwe in the DRC between 1998 and 2000, were instances of the transformation of economic regionalism into security regionalism. Similarly, in the Horn of Africa, since its inception, IGAD was preoccupied with the mediation of conflicts in Sudan and Somalia.
The experience of ECOWAS, SADC, and IGAD in regional security coincided with a global push to build the capacity of African sub-regional organizations as vehicles of peacekeeping and conflict resolution. These donor-driven initiatives began in the early 1990s with the Clinton administration’s programme on the African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI), and have continued with various programmes by the European Union (EU) to boost the institutional capacity of African regional organizations in early warnings, preventive diplomacy, peace-keeping, and post-conflict reconstruction. In more recent years, the multiplication of mandates has been witnessed in external pressures on these institutions to engage in counter-terrorism efforts and anchor the African Standby Force (see Sarjoh Bah and Aning 2008; Youngs 2006; Mulugeta 2008).
Insecurity in Africa’s sub-regions inevitably foisted conflict resolution roles on regional institutions, but the unanswered question has been whether these responsibilities dovetail with the long-term objectives of trade integration and investment mandates that these institutions were originally crafted to pursue. African sub-regional institutions such as ECOWAS, ECCAS, EAC, and SADC have understandably taken on security and conflict resolution roles which, while seeking to promote stability, may also in the short to medium term distract from the agenda of economic integration. As most of the civil conflicts started to wane in the mid-2000s, the salient issue that emerged on the sub-regional horizon was how to minimize the proliferation of security roles for regional economic communities (RECs) while they refocus on the priorities that initially animated integration. Some critics of the proliferation of security mandates have contended that framing the future trajectories of African regionalism will have to confront the question of separation of economic from security objectives, particularly since Africa is in the process of creating a new continental security architecture through the formation of the African Union (AU) in 2002 (Khadiagala 2006).
The creation of the AU marked another critical phase in Africa’s regionalism at the turn of the new millennium. As part of the efforts to reignite the spirit of African problem-solving, the AU was restructured to meet the many challenges that Africa has confronted since the early 1990s. Breaking with the tradition established in the OAU Charter, the AU Constitutive Act envisages a common defence policy and regional intervention in response to war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity (Touray 2005). Building on the Abuja Treaty, the AU has designated the following RECs as the fulcrum for continental economic integration: COMESA, SADC, ECOWAS, IGAD, ECCAS, the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU), and the Senegalese Community for Aid and Self-Development (SENCAD). The AU has also established a new timeframe of 2034 by which the AEC would be operational. Perhaps as one of the initial steps toward the AEC, SADC, COMESA, and the ECA agreed in November 2008 to work toward creating Africa’s largest trading bloc. At a meeting in Kampala, the three organizations agreed on a roadmap that provides for harmonization of trade and investment regulations among the three RECs with a combined population of over 527 million people and a combined GDP of US$624 billion. It also provides for consultation and the exchange of information and expertise, mobilization of financial resources to implement activities of common interest, work plans, and capacity building.
As part of Africa’s determination for development and integration, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) sees RECs as the fundamental building blocks to achieve its multifaceted objectives. As it seeks to reduce poverty, promote sustainable socioeconomic development and growth, and foster regional and continental integration, NEPAD has made national, regional, and continental organizations the key implementers of its goals (Ikome 2007). At the January 2008 AU summit in Ethiopia, African leaders resolved to integrate NEPAD into AU structures as a way of promoting the continental ownership of NEPAD and making the AU the implementer of NEPAD programmes. The NEPAD framework is consistent with the principles of new regionalism to increase both the participation of the private sector through investments in a wide range of sectors and the direct involvement of civil society and non-state actors in regional and continental affairs. Within the context of the evolving reciprocal relations between NEPAD and RECs, there have been steps to apply NEPAD criteria in the identification and prioritization of programmes in RECs; deepening ownership of NEPAD within RECs; and reaching out to REC constituencies in the design and implementation of projects. In essence the RECs are the building blocks of NEPAD and are in a strategic position to guide the implementation of programmes and projects under NEPAD (see NEPAD 2001, 2008).
The Resurgence of Fast-Track Continental Integration
The new structures and institutions embodied in the AU, NEPAD, and RECs have attempted to rebuild the division of labour between security and economic roles in integration that existed in the first three decades of African independence, when the OAU dealt primarily with political and security matters while sub-regional organizations focused on economic concerns. However, it would be difficult to obliterate the burgeoning security functions of RECs given their centrality in Africa’s security initiatives. Although there have been more efforts to evolve better coordination mechanisms between the AU and the RECs in a wide range of areas, the problem of defining roles and mandates remains an impediment in the harmonization of policies among these institutions.
Since its formation, the AU has faced the most formidable challenge from a Libyan-led agenda for a Union government. Gaddafi forced debates on transcending AU structures to create a continental government in what has been billed as the grand debate on the Union government. Hardly had the AU institutions been given time to mature and prove themselves than discussions on the Union government began to overshadow its operations. The idea of a Union government came about when the AU Assembly of Heads of State in Abuja decided, in January 2005, to create a number of ministerial portfolios for the AU. Subsequently, the AU Assembly set up a committee of seven heads of state under President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda to examine the proposal. The committee hurriedly came up with a report that was submitted to the Assembly at the session held in Sirte, Libya, in July 2005. The report expressed the view that instead of creating ministerial portfolios in certain areas of the AU, Africa should work towards the formation of a United States of Africa.
Subsequently, Libya and its allies continued to press for the formation of additional AU committees and studies to examine the timeline for a Union government. However, the AU Executive Council report, submitted to the heads of state meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in January 2007, revealed the wide rifts among members: ‘all Member States accept the United States of Africa as a common and desirable goal [but] differences exist over the modalities and time frame for achieving this goal and the appropriate pace of integration’ (Anon. 2007). These differences played out at the Accra summit of heads of state in July 2007. Although the summit reiterated the need to accelerate ‘the economic and political integration of the African continent, including the formation of a Union Government for Africa with the ultimate objective of creating the United States of Africa’, differences persisted as a majority of the AU conceded to accelerate the process set in motion by the Abuja Treaty of 1991 (see AU 2007). The Accra summit nonetheless established a ministerial committee to examine the functions of the Union government, identify its domains of competence, and define the relationship between it and the RECs.
When Gaddafi became the Chairman of the AU in 2009, he used the opportunity to harangue and cajole African leaders to agree to a central AU authority with powers over foreign affairs, economy, and defence. At the July 2009 summit in Sirte, this pressure yielded an announcement on the transformation of the AU Commission into an AU Authority. Facing objections from South Africa and Nigeria, Gaddafi pulled back from the immediate implementation of the transformation and, instead, requested the AU Commission to study the modalities of implementation. After the Sirte summit, Botswana’s Vice-President Mompati Merafhe lashed out at Gaddafi’s chairmanship of the AU, noting that:
The chair has no respect for established procedures and processes of the African Union and this may be motivated by his burning desire to coerce everyone into the premature establishment of an African Union government … Whilst the summit was forced to adopt a document most countries did not agree with, the test will be in its implementation.
(Sudan Tribune 2009)
In addition to resurrecting the old debates between continentalism and sub-regionalism, the debates on the Union government have overshadowed plans to revamp the professional competence and institutional integrity of the AU – problems identified in the AU audit report of 2008. While a bulk of the criticisms in the Audit Report were levelled at the dysfunctional nature of the AU Commission, the AU summit in Egypt accepted 19 recommendations, rejected 22, and referred 52 to the AU Commission for further study. To mollify the critics, President of the AU Commission Jean Ping outlined major reforms he sought to undertake to improve the AU, underscoring the importance of the recommendations in the AU audit report that gave priority to the values of competence, experience, efficiency, and justice (see AU 2008).
Regional Integration and External Actors
In the first and second phases of African regionalism, external actors, in particular donors, have featured prominently as providers of resources, investments, and markets. With the accession of African countries to the Lomé Convention in 1975, the debates against promoting Western ties that Nkrumah had assiduously propounded lost their policy significance. Over the years, funding through the Lomé process helped strengthen African regional institutions through investment in infrastructure and other projects with cross-regional impact. In most of the 1960s and 1970s multilateral and bilateral institutions devoted a portion of their development assistance to regional integration. As Africa faced severe economic crises in the 1980s, however, donor engagement in regional integration became less salient, particularly since adjustment policies were targeted to stabilize individual countries. The exceptions were SADCC (geared toward dependency reduction on minority regimes in southern Africa) and IGADD (with its focus on alleviating the problems of drought and desertification in the Horn of Africa).
Donor re-engagement with regional integration has occurred as part of boosting the ability of African institutions to strengthen economic reforms and participate effectively in the new global economy. As Goldstein notes:
the term regionalism itself is acquiring a new meaning. Integration agreements are now about much more than reducing tariffs and quotas and explicitly include the goal of removing other barriers that segment markets and impede the free flow of goods, services, and factors of production; they are outward-looking, instead of attempting to apply to more than one country the import-substitution model of the past …
(Goldstein 2002: 11)
A dominant issue in contemporary African regionalism is the impact of the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) mandated as part of the Cotonou Partnership Agreement, the successor to the Lomé Agreements between Europe and African countries. Signed in 2000, the Cotonou Agreement reflected the changes in economic relationships between Europe and Africa, with the expansion of the EU and pressure from the World Trade Organization (WTO) to eliminate the long-standing generous trade preferences for African countries in EU markets. The Agreement envisaged the phasing out of the trade arrangements by January 2008 and their replacement by EPAs that would fulfil the requirements of the WTO.
Since the accession of the Cotonou Agreement, negotiations for EPAs have constituted a source of strife between the EU and African regional blocs. In conception, EPAs seek the establishment of new trading blocs among African states to negotiate free trade areas (FTAs) with Europe and better coordination of EU aid programmes with the EPAs (Draper 2007). Europe has frequently criticized African regionalism for overlapping memberships, incompatible goals, and unwieldy mandates. It has thus tried to project the EPAs as a means to rationalize African regionalism, contending that EPAs can only flourish in sub-regional contexts with distinct memberships and dense economic interactions. This has placed countries such as Tanzania in a quandary, forced to choose negotiating an EPA in SADC, the East African Customs Union (EACU), or the East and Southern Africa (ESA) grouping. Although in 2003 SADC proposed that Tanzania should continue negotiating EPAs under SADC, the EU demanded negotiations under the EACU. Similarly, Europe has pressured Kenya and Uganda to quit COMESA, despite the reluctance of these countries to negotiate under the EA Customs because of the infancy of the bloc and the weak economies of the member states (Edwin 2007).
Although EPAs are supposed to expand intra-regional trade and trade links with Europe, Stevens has observed that they may erect new trade barriers among African countries, defeating the objective of integration:
By increasing the stakes, EPAs may make regional liberalization less likely. Some countries willing to remove barriers to imports from their neighbours with similar economies may be unwilling to offer the same terms to highly competitive (and possibly dumped) EU imports. Regional groups may splinter between those willing to liberalize towards the EU and the others.
(Stevens 2006: 447)
Questions about the shape of EPAs and their impact on RECs and African regionalism in general will take time to unfold, but already the negotiations have exposed some profound tensions facing the construction of regional institutions. As part of the initiative to galvanize African efforts to understand the long-term implications of EPAs on African regionalism, the ECA has been organizing expert workshops across Africa to evaluate the effects of EPAs by focusing on issues of coordination and harmonization, as well as reviewing questions of trade facilitation, infrastructure development, and product quality. At the time of writing, individual states or groups of states had signed interim EPAs but permanent agreements had been delayed due to wrangles over the effects of trade liberalization on African economies.
Less certain on the trajectories of regionalism is also the involvement of new actors such as China. Although China has stepped up engagement with African countries on trade, investment, and development assistance (see Alden, this volume), it is only beginning to address regional institutions. Since it hosted the annual meeting of the African Development Bank (AfDB) in Shanghai in 2007, China has signalled its interest to strengthen its ties to African regional and sub-regional organizations such as ECOWAS, COMESA, EAC, and SADC. For instance, in May 2008 a delegation of ministers responsible for EAC visited China to learn from the Chinese experience in infrastructure development and to garner support and partnership in developing the region’s infrastructures as part of the overall EAC Infrastructure Development Plan. Under this Plan, the EAC seeks to develop roads, railways, civil aviation, and telecommunications to achieve higher standards of living and make the region competitive and attractive for sustainable investment, trade, and development. Similarly, China and the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development (EBID) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) in June 2007 to establish markets in China and the ECOWAS region that will enable their citizens to exploit trade and investment opportunities. As part of this initiative, China held an Economic and Trade Forum with ECOWAS in September 2008. At the continental level, China has associated itself closely with the ideas behind NEPAD.
Traditional multilateral actors such as the World Bank have recently recommitted to strengthening regional institutions in Africa. In September 2008 the World Bank signed an MOU with the AU aimed at deepening collaboration in the areas of regional integration, governance, post-conflict countries, relations with the diaspora, and HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases. Collaboration is intended to be result focused, with the World Bank’s technical expertise complementing the AU’s political leadership. The MOU provides that specific arrangements for individual activities in each substantive area will be set out in jointly formulated work plans, and the two institutions will periodically assess the effectiveness of the collaboration. The MOU also provides an overall framework for collaboration over an initial five-year period in each of these areas, which are priorities for both the World Bank and the AU.
Conclusion
African experiments with collective regional institutions for prosperity and security have been marked by both integrative and disintegrative trends. Geographical and cultural proximities constitute the impetus for integration in addition to the necessity of managing problems occasioned by small economies and political fragility. Disintegrative dynamics on the other hand have inhered in Africa’s political diversity, fixation with national sovereignty, and inability to transform the ideals of regionalism into meaningful programmes. Over the years, regionalism for development and continental unity has entailed reconciling the opportunities of geographical and cultural contiguity with the divisive questions of sovereignty and political compatibility. These trends have been mediated by leadership, vision, and compromises around institutions and programmes that seek to build collective synergies, promote cooperation, and foster regional identities.
The current and future dimensions of regional integration in Africa are shaped largely by past practices established since the 1960s. The structural problems of underdevelopment, external orientation of primarily agricultural economies, and inadequate infrastructure for trade and investment have remained a constant in evaluating the obstacles of RECs to achieve the objectives of development. While some RECs have made efforts to deepen integration by creating institutions such as customs unions and free trade and incorporating more voices in integration debates, the first- and second-generation constraints loom large on the landscape of regionalism. These constraints are compounded by the ambivalence surrounding the construction of an AEC. Although most proponents of the AEC posit RECs as transitional vehicles for its realization, there are profound questions about whether RECs require sufficient time to evolve effective supra-national institutions before they are merged into the AEC. Timetables that anticipate the realization of the AEC do not necessarily take into the account the hurdles in constructing viable RECs. The 2008 MOU among the EAC, SADC, and COMESA for an incremental merger may point in the direction of rethinking the timetable for the AEC, but these institutions still have a lot of work to do in realizing this objective and, more importantly, in getting member states to buy into the merger project.
The future of regional integration hinges on the resolution of the tension between continentalism and sub-regionalism, a discourse that perennially resurfaces in African inter-state relations. As the debates on the Union government since the 1960s reveal, strong leaders with only tenuous links to their domestic constituencies have been the major proponents of continentalist visions. Nkrumah attempted to force the grand idea of African unity before the military overthrew him in 1966 (see Khadiagala 2010), and Gaddafi ultimately suffered the same fate, as domestic opponents contested his rule and challenged his fixation with the Union government in Africa. Of Gaddafi’s autocratic allies in the AU, Senegal’s Wade has already lost power, and Burkina Faso’s Blaise Compaoré is unlikely to have the mettle to pursue the extravagant agenda of the Union government on his own. The defeat of continentalists may thus allow the sub-regionalists to forge ahead with the slow but steady process of building regional institutions that balance inter-governmentalism and supranationalism.
Notes
1For some of the seminal debates on the subjects see Ernest Haas (1970), Asante (1997), and Gruhn (1979).
2See, for instance, Balassa (1961), Viner (1950), and Robson (1998).
3For wide-ranging discussions on colonial schemes see Green and Krishna (1967), Robson (1967), and Roland (1967).
4For the evolution of European relations with Africa during this period see Zartman (1971).
5For wide-ranging analyses of the ECA’s position and the Lagos Plan see UNECA (1984) and Onwuka and Sesay (1985).
6On recent trends in East Africa see Odhiambo (2011).
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