The road to regional integration in Africa:Macroeconomic convergence and performance in COMESA
The road to regional integration in Africa:Macroeconomic convergence and performance in COMESA
COMESA (Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa) aims at establishing a currency union by 2025. To this end, a policy harmonisation programme and a set of convergence criteria have been set up. A number of projects to foster trade, economic and financial integration have also been launched. Using time-series and panel econometrics, this paper provides evidence on different dimensions of the integration process: macroeconomic policy convergence, shocks symmetry, per-capita income catching-up. Highlights are as follows. The monetary policy stance mildly converges across countries; fiscal stabilisation is however still problematic in several member states. Trade integration is low, but for a bulk of countries in the region there is evidence that shocks are somewhat symmetric. There is instead little evidence that per-capita incomes across countries are converging. In fact, some convergence to the bottom might be taking place among the poorest members.
CITATION: Carmignani, Fabrizio. The road to regional integration in Africa:Macroeconomic convergence and performance in COMESA . : , 2006. Journal of African Economies,Vol.15,no.2,2006,pp.212-250 - Available at: https://library.au.int/road-regional-integration-africamacroeconomic-convergence-and-performance-comesa-2