Economic Cooperation and Integration in Africa: Experiences, Challenges and Opportunities

The economic and political benefits of cooperation and integration in Africa are, at a general level, attractive and easy to understand. Ad, in the post-independence period, African countries gave sign various treaties -- no doubt after taking into account the costs involved -- establishing sub-regional economic groupings. In a historical context, there has on the whole been limited success in achieving the immediate objectives of cooperation and integration schemes -- like raising the level of intra-regional trade -- and the higher aim of raising the average rate of economic growth for the cooperating countries. In spite of modest fains, however, there has been in recent years, a new and positive mood, strongest at the sub-regional level, toward economic cooperation and integration. This mood has culminated in the ratification of the Abuja Treaty in 1994, establishing the African Economic Community. Given the limited Progresse on African integration, on the one hand, and the positive mood on the imperatives of regional cooperation, on the other, this paper aims, in the first instance, at analyzing of sub-regional efforts so far. This is selectively done in three cases of West Africa (ECOWAS), Eastern and Southern Africa (PTA, now COMESA) and Southern Africa (SADCC that later became SADC). It is hoped that a careful and disaggregated look at these sub-regional efforts may provide a pragmatic basis for re-assessing the challenges and opportunities for African integration in the rest of the 1990s and beyond. On the basis of the experiences examined and on broader considerations, the paper concludes on a forward looking policy context that emphasizes the potential that economic cooperation may have for raisin regional investment and growth. Four main areas for greeter policy emphasis and action are delineated -- macroeconomic and institutional coordination; coordination in respect of infrastructural and natural resource investment; private-sector promotion; and the redefinition of the role of donors and multilateral institutions in supporting regional cooperation.