Editorial
The Dominoes of Africa’s Regional Integration
Ask anyone with insider knowledge of Africa’s regional economic communities – and they will tell you that most of the issues keeping Africa apart are not major.
Yes – infrastructure is a problem: The main road connecting South Africa to Botswana is different on the Botswana side of the border. However, it behooves to view this thing as actually minuscule compared to the level of intrigue and sheer lack of information going on within these different regional economic communities (RECs).
For instance, why is the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) trying to create a whole new entity to provide political risk insurance when the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) has a fully fledged outfit roaring out of Nairobi?
Secondly, why the heck is Tanzania a member of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and not part of COMESA? Rumor has it that Tanzania was a little suspicious of COMESA when it was still the Preferential Trade Area; just as the same rumor mill tells tales of intrigue around how Tanzania feels like it is being sidelined by Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi in the East African Community.
But with all due respect, this could simply be a miserable ‘Game of Thrones.’ It really does not matter who the alpha REC is, or who has the most effective support from governments. As far as we can see, whether COMESA has 19 member states from the North to the South, and ECOWAS has a great many of West Africa’s major countries amongst their members, it does not help anyone if these Secretaries General are not friends and keen on the kind of mutually beneficial partnerships that will ensure that Africa’s over 1 billion people benefit from regional integration.
To make the case for regional integration, we might even suggest that things will all fall into place as soon as a tipping point becomes available. Our sanguine idea is premised on the fact that the things that separate Africans are almost non-existant.
There’s no difference between Ugandans and Mauritanians. These Africans all want the same thing: They want their children to go to better schools, they are all ‘unhappy’ that their forefathers were colonized by either the French or the British; and countries such as South Africa and Nigeria understand the essence of doing business with their neighbors.
