OPINION

The next AU Summit to fast track the integration agenda in Africa

By Joseph Atta-Mensah, Senior Economic Affairs Officer, ECA

African countries are increasingly realising the virtue of regional co-operation and integration as a strategy to achieving robust and self-sustaining economic recovery and growth and also becoming an important and effective player in the global economy. Through this process, the continent can pool its capacities, endowments and energies together to transform itself, and thereby help uplift the lives of the millions of its peoples. To this end, African countries and governments, through the regional economic communities (RECs) and the African Union (AU), are pursuing an agenda of continental integration along a roadmap of establishing Free Trade Areas, Customs Union and Common Markets. Eventually these efforts are expected to converge to an African Economic Community, where economic, monetary, fiscal, social and sectoral policies would be uniform across the continent. Through the wider economic and market space thus engineered, Africa can hope to strengthen its economic independence and empowerment vis-à-vis the rest of the world.

In the last two decades, African leaders have rekindled their goal of establishing a continental African Economic Union. The 1980 Lagos Plan of Action (LPA) of the then Organization of African Unity (OAU) emphasizes a greater need for a pan-African programme of economic cooperation and integration. The leadership of the continent again re-echoed their commitment of an integrated Africa and followed up the LPA with the proclamation of the 1991 Abuja Treaty, which calls for the establishment of the African Economic Community. Under the framework of the Abuja Treaty, Africa would become an Economic Union by 2027, with a common currency, full mobility of the factors of production and free trade among the 53 countries that make up the continent.

To achieve this vision, article 6 of the Treaty lays down a timetable for the process of integration, or the creation of Africa Economic Community (AEC) to be carried out over a period of 34 years (1994-2027), in 6 different stages of different duration.

The timeframe for the Abuja Treaty is too long

The Sirte Declaration of September 1999 and the Constitutive Act, which transformed the OAU into the African Union (AU), find the timeframe for the Abuja Treaty too long and calls for speeding up the integration agenda. This was also evident at the AU Summit in January 2007, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where the leadership deliberated on how to fast track the continental integration agenda. Consequently, the leadership decided to focus the next AU Summit in July 2007, in Accra, entirely on the issue of an African Union Government and the possible way forward on the future path of the continent's integration agenda.

Africa is making some progress in its attempts to integrate. However, the results are mixed. Notable progress has been made in the areas of trade, communications, macroeconomic policies, and transportation. The West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA), the East African Community (EAC) and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) have all made significant progress in trade liberalization and facilitation. In the area of free movement of people, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has made remarkable strides. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the East African Community (EAC) have progressed in the area of infrastructure. For peace and security, ECOWAS and SADC have made commendable.

Although the RECs have made some progress, Africa still faces a number of ongoing challenges. First, there are no enforcement mechanisms to deal with African States that decide not to adhere to protocols and treaties they are signatories to. Second, there is no compensation mechanism for the losers of the integration process also acts as a constraint for the full implementation of integration schemes. Third, compared to world standards, Africa's infrastructure network is generally very weak, constraining the physical integration of the continent. Fourth, the multiple memberships of countries in various RECs, and the resulting overlap and duplication of functions of the RECs also act as stumbling blocks to the integration agenda. Fifth, Africa's macroeconomic and financial environment is very weak. What is observed in most RECs are significant differences in tariffs, inflation, exchange rates, debt-to-GDP ratios, rate of money growth and other vital macroeconomic variables between member countries.

It is hoped that these challenges would be better addressed if the idea of African Union Government could materialize at a much faster pace. The Accra Summit should therefore be a turning point.