Regional Economic Integration in Africa: Challenges and Prospects

Africa has witnessed various efforts of economic integration at the continental and regional levels. While the idea of regional integrationis as old as the Organization of African Unity now renamed as African Union, recent summits have reaffirmed Africa’s commitment toward boosting intra-Africa trade and integration. With the grand aim of forming a continental economic community (African Economic Community) in the future, African countries aspire to use the various regional economic communities as building blocs. Despite such endeavors, however, the continent’s economy has remained fragmented, inter alia, due to low level of infrastructure development and the state-centric nature of the integration efforts. The overlapping multiple memberships of countries to the regional groupings has complicated the integration effort. The absence of clear rule on the relationship between the existing regional economic communities and the ‘to-be-formed’ African Economic community has also contributed to the uncertainty in the integration process. In view of thesechallenges, I argue that the focus on speeding up the formation of thecontinental wide free trade area (FTA) does not seem timely; and the focus should rather be redirected at strengthening the regional economic communities. These pursuits meanwhile call for addressing the legal and non legal issues that are important steps in bringing the continent closer to integration.