ECA Briefs Ambassadors on Regional Integration
By Andrew Allimadi, Communication Officer, TRID, ECA
23 July 2004

The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) held a presentation and discussion of regional integration to ambassadors based in Addis Ababa on Friday 23 July. The presentation was chaired by Lalla-Ben Barka, the deputy executive secretary of ECA, and also attended by Elizabeth Tankeu, the African Union's (AU) Commissioner for Trade and Industry. The session was based on ECA's latest publication titled Assessing Regional Integration in Africa.

In her opening statement to the briefing session, Madame Ben Barka welcomed all ambassadors to ECA and pointed out that regional integration and the eventual creation of a common market can provide a major boost to African development. She said "a common market combining Africa's 53 mostly small and fragmented economies will lead to economies of scale that make countries competitive. It would provide access to a wider trading and investment environment, inducing backward and forward linkages. It would promote exports to regional markets, building experience to enter global markets. And it would provide a framework for African countries to cooperate in developing common services for finance, transport, and communications."

The director of ECA's trade and regional integration divisions presented the highlights of the report to the ambassadors, which shows that although some progress has been made towards integration, the picture is mixed. Some sectors, some regional economic communities and some countries are doing better than others. Regarding trade liberalization, he noted that the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA) launched its free trade area in October 2000; and that the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA), Southern African Customs Union (SACU) and Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) were already customs unions. Despite these efforts, intra-African trade remains low at about 10 percent of the continents total trade with the rest of the world. He concluded by referring to several challenges that need to be addressed if the pace of integration is to be accelerated. The challenges include the need for member states to ratify and implement treaty obligations, the need for sustainable financing to regional economic communities, and methods of engaging the private sector in integration initiatives.

In the discussion, ambassadors welcomed the report as a sound and timely document, and called for another seminar on the report after they have the chance to study it. The Ugandan ambassador, Wasswa Birigwa, said that after a deeper discussion, all ambassadors could make recommendations to their ministers of foreign affairs, which is one way to ensure implementation of the report's findings. Ambassadors also called for deeper collaboration between ECA and the AU to find ways of fulfilling the goals of both institutions, which are the political and economic union of Africa.

AU Commissioner Tankeu gave some examples of the collaboration that exists between ECA and AU, including work on the second conference of African ministers of trade, which took place in Kigali, Rwanda in May this year. The two institutions are also working on elaborating a minimum programme of convergence as directed by African ministers of trade.