Regional integration and industrial development: strange bedfellows for the African continental free trade area programme in Southern Africa

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) aims to reshape Africa’s economic landscape by strengthening regional integration and boosting industrialization through lowered trade barriers, harmonized standards, and increased intra-continental trade in goods and services. However, this initiative faces a major obstacle in the form of national sovereignty. In Southern Africa, despite vocal commitments to integration, industrial policies remain disjointed, nationalist, and protectionist, weakening regional coordination and industrial growth. This paper interrogates the sovereignty-integration tension at the heart of AfCFTA’s implementation in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). It posits that national reluctance to cede policy space, particularly in trade and industrial governance, stymies efforts to build the cross-border value chains necessary for inclusive growth. The political economy of domestic constituencies, uneven industrial capacities, and mistrust among member states exacerbate these dynamics, leading to policy incoherence and integration fatigue. Drawing on theories of sovereignty, regional integration, and political settlements, the paper adopts the critical reflection methodology, supported by comparative insights from the European Union, using the Airbus consortium case. The Airbus story illustrates how sovereignty can be strategically pooled to enable sectoral integration, shared industrial governance, and global competitiveness, without requiring full political union. The paper suggests a pragmatic path forward for SADC, recommending functional integration in specific sectors, supported by supranational coordination mechanisms, industrial development funds, and differentiated integration frameworks. It argues that sovereignty, redefined as ‘strategic sovereignty,’ can become an asset rather than an obstacle to regional integration if based on trust, institutional innovation, and mutual benefit. Therefore, the success of AfCFTA in Southern Africa depends not on eliminating sovereignty but on reconciling it with regional priorities. The real choice is not between sovereignty and integration but between fragmented stagnation and collaborative development.