Challenging The Frontiers Of African Integration

CHALLENGING THE FRONTIERS OF AFRICAN INTEGRATION: The Dynamics of Policies, Politics and Transformation in The East African Community ISBN 978 9987 521-81-4 Author: Juma V. Mwapachu About the Book The basic premise of this book is that regional integration in Africa offers great promise in addressing endemic poverty and in advancing Africa's integration in the global economy. Based on hands on experience of the author and a body of research focusing on the East African Community, the book breaks the path in providing a wealth of information and analysis of cutting edge topical issues on Africas, s emergent promise, as well as on the challenges that that confront Africa and EAC in particular in achieving deeper economic and political integration. The EAC model of integration, with its unique and lofty but overly ambitious goal of political federation, evidently offers exciting possibility for the broader quest for the African Economic Community and the the United States of Africa. However, there also clear lessons, marked by challenges of zero sum game mindsets and sovereignty sensitivities that slow down and even hamper what would make the EAC process more robust and rewarding and with important bearing on Africa's own continental ambitions. A notable feature of the book is the coverage of the historical development of the COMESA-EAC-SADC Tripartite Framework, a novel idea in the attempt to address the dysfunctions of multiple memberships of Regional Economic Communities in Africa and the pragmatic and progressive approach towards building a fast paced movement for the realization of the African Economic Community.

"This paper seeks to explore the theme of regional integration with reference to the establishment of a 'United States of Africa'. The paper critically assesses the validity of the proposition that integration is a desirable strategy for overcoming Africa's deep-seated developmental challenges. For regional integration to succeed it has to be based on effective national growth and development strategies. Furthermore, there needs to be a normative convergence on the issues of democratisation and promotion of human rights. This will require a departure from the negative sovereignty, which is decidedly state-centric and obsessed with anti-imperialism, towards the exploration of more positive expressions of sovereignty that take into account the importance of non-state actors in promoting development"--Page 16

Attempts at regional integration in Africa date back to the pre-independence era, when the decolonization agenda was the main factor driving regionalism. During the immediate post-independence period in Africa, there were many attempts towards unification. A number of African leaders, among them Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, and Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, were strong advocates of the Pan-Africanism movement and were instrumental in the establishment of the Organization of African States (OAU), the predecessor to the African Union (AU). At the regional level, there have been numerous attempts to establish regional blocks designed to reduce barriers to trade and restrictions on the movement of people across national boundaries. Although African regional integration efforts date back many years, overall progress has been slow and has faced many setbacks. Economic development is a significant dimension of regional integration. Around the world, building functioning regional markets has been the key to unlocking greater economic opportunity. Market development necessitates working across borders, and historically the most successful markets have been those that have effectively and efficiently spanned countries and regions. The ancient Silk Road comes to mind, as do burgeoning markets in Europe and Asia. A crucial part of unlocking economic potential is spatial planning--building infrastructure and institutions where they are needed most. Although regional integration is inherently political, economic considerations must drive the process.Today, African regional integration appears to be gaining considerable momentum. Several of the Regional Economic Communities (RECs), among them the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the East African Community (EAC), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), have seen progress in their efforts, as discussed below. Significantly, broader efforts at continental integration are also gaining ground, most notably through the landmark Abuja Treaty that resulted from the Final Act of Lagos in 1991. During the last AU Summit held in January 2012 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the heads of state agreed to fast track the establishment of a Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) by 2017. This push for closer integration is further evidenced in the announcement of the 2008 tripartite agreement among three of the well-established RECs in Eastern and Southern Africa, the EAC, COMESA and SADC, to merge and form the Tripartite Group or African Free Trade Zone. However, many challenges remain to achieving full integration of the RECs, let alone the establishment of a supra-regional or continental FTA. This paper catalogues the progress made towards regional integration in Africa, with a focus on the various obstacles these efforts have faced. In the section that follows, we start with a discussion of the importance of regional integration to Africa, highlighting some of the political and economic benefits that are expected from regional integration and previewing some of the more significant challenges. Section III provides a brief status report of the current state of regional integration on the continent. Section IV discusses the main challenges that have slowed regional integration efforts. Section V concludes with some observations about the future of regional integration in Africa and the way forward.

China and India's new-found interest in trade and investment with Africa - home to 300 million of the globe's poorest people and the world's most formidable development challenge - presents a significant opportunity for growth and integration of theSub-Saharan continent into the global economy. Africa's Silk Road finds that China and India's South-South commerce with Africa isabout far more than natural resources, opening the way for Africato become a processor of commodities and a competitive supplier of goods and services to these countries - a major departure from its long established relations with the North. A growing number of Chinese and Indian businesses active in Africa operate on a global scale, work with world-class technologies, produce products and services according to the most demanding standards, and foster the integration of African businesses into advanced markets.There are significant imbalances, however, in these emerging commercial relationships. These can be addressed through a series of reforms in all countries: 'At-the-border' reforms, such as elimination of China and India's escalating tariffs on Africa's leading exports, and elimination ofAfrica's tariffs on certain inputs that make exports uncompetitive 'Behind-the-border' reforms in Africa, to unleash competitive market forces and strengthen its basic market institutions 'Between-the-border' improvements in trade facilitation mechanisms to decrease transactions costs Reforms that leverage linkages between investment and trade, toallow African businesses to participate in global productionnetworks that investments by Chinese and Indian firms can generate.

In this work, Richard E. Mshomba offers an in-depth analysis of economic integration in Africa with a focus on the East African Community (EAC), arguably the most ambitious of all the regional economic blocs currently in existence in Africa. Economic Integration in Africa provides more than just an overview of regional economic blocs in Africa; it also offers a rich historical discussion on the birth and death of the first EAC starting with the onset of colonialism in the 1890s, and a systematic analysis of the birth, growth, and aspirations of the current EAC. Those objectives include forming a monetary union and eventually an East African political federation. This book also examines the African Union's aspirations for continent-wide integration as envisioned by the Abuja Treaty. Mshomba carefully argues that maturity of democracy and good governance in each country are prerequisites for the formation of a viable and sustainable East African federation and genuine continent-wide integration.

The book is very policy-oriented and fills an important gap in the literature on policies related specifically to the dialogue of civilisation in a globalized world. Deals with cross-cutting issues in economic integration, conflict management, human rights and sustainable development. Addresses challenges such as religious extremism, environmental problems, and political unrest.

This landmark book is the first of its kind to assess the challenges of African region-building and regional integration across all five African sub-regions and more than five decades of experience, considering both political and economic aspects. Leading scholars and practitioners come together to analyze a range of entwined topics, including: the theoretical underpinnings that have informed Africa's regional integration trajectory; the political economy of integration, including the sources of different 'waves' of integration in pan-Africanism and the reaction to neo-liberal economic pressures; the complexities of integration in a context of weak states and the informal regionalization that often occurs in 'borderlands'; the increasing salience of Africa's relationships with rising extra-regional economic powers, including China and India; and comparative lessons from non-African regional blocs, including the EU, ASEAN, and the Southern Common Market. A core argument of this book, running through all chapters, is that region-building must be recognized as a political project as much as if not more than an economic one; successful region-building in Africa will need to include the complex political tasks of strengthening state capacity (including states' capacity as 'developmental states' that can actively engage in economic planning), resolving long-standing conflicts over resources and political dominance, improving democratic governance, and developing trans-national political structures that are legitimate and inclusive.

Africa, which was not long ago discarded as a hopeless and irrelevant region, has become a new 'frontier' for global trade, investment and the conduct of international relations. This book surveys the socio-economic, intellectual and security related dimensions of African regionalisms since the turn of the 20th century. It argues that the continent deserves to be considered as a crucible for conceptualizing and contextualizing the ongoing influence of colonial policies, the emergence of specific integration and security cultures, the spread of cross-border regionalisation processes at the expense of region-building, the interplay between territory, space and trans-state networks, and the intrinsic ambivalence of global frontier narratives. This is emphasized through the identification of distinctive 'threads' of regionalism which, by focusing on genealogies, trajectories and ideals, transcend the binary divide between old and new regionalisms. In doing so, the book opens new perspectives not only on Africa in international relations, but also Africa’s own international relations. This text will be of key interest to students and scholars of African politics, African history, regionalism, comparative regionalism, and more broadly to international political economy, international relations and global and regional governance.