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Abstract
Support for regional economic integration in Africa runs high amongst the continent's international development partners and African elites. However, its expression in European forms of economic integration is not appropriate to regional capacities and in some cases may do more harm than good. This lacuna is exacerbated by technical and theoretical analyses rooted either in economics or international relations literature. This article sets out to reconceptualise the foundations of African economic integration by reviewing key debates within each literature and comparing the results across disciplinary boundaries. Overall, it is concluded that a much more limited approach is required, one that prioritises trade facilitation and regulatory cooperation in areas related primarily to the conduct of business; underpinned by a security regime emphasizing the good governance agenda at the domestic level. Care should be taken to design the ensuing schemes in such a way as to avoid contributing to major implementation and capacity challenges in establishing viable and legitimate states. In doing so, the presence of regional leaders with relatively deep pockets – South Africa in the Southern African case – points to the imperative of building such limited regional economic arrangements around key states.
Notes
1 Dinka and Kennes, Africa's Regional Integration Arrangements; Draper et al., SACU, Regional Integration; UNECA, Assessing Regional Integration in Africa II; UNECA, Assessing Regional Integration in Africa Citation2008.
2 In terms of which member states are prepared to construct collective norms and regulations in order to facilitate compatibility amongst themselves and prevent individual states from engaging in actions destructive of economic activity, in the interests of maintaining (regional) peace. These norms and regulations constitute what Keohane termed an international “regime”, which he regarded as essential to preserve and stabilise the international economy (Keohane, After Hegemony).
3 Draper et al., “Trade, Economic Cooperation, and CPMR ”, 213.
4 Kelly, “Trade, Security and Globalization”, 75–7.
5 Gilpin, Global Political Economy, 93–7.
6 The Europeans in order to construct domestic welfare states; the US Congress in order to retain autonomy over US trade policy.
7 Ruggie, “International Regimes, Transactions, and Change”.
8 Gilpin, Global Political Economy, 357.
9 Kelly, “Trade, Security and Globalization”, 74–5.
10 Ibid., 76.
11 Brown et al., “Introduction”, 9.
12 Hammerstad, People, States, and Regions.
13 In Africa in the 1990s and in the first decade of this century inter- and intra-state conflicts broke out in West Africa (Liberia, Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire), Central Africa (the DRC, Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda, involving also Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia), and the horn of Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea).
14 The Kenyan then Zimbabwean political deals reached in 2008 and 2009 respectively, imperfect as they are, attest to this new paradigm. Hammerstad, People, States, and Regions, 10.
15 Encompassing the basis for its foundation and identity; its territorial extent; and the nature of its domestic government. Clapham, “The Changing World of Regional Integration”, 64.
16 Ibid., 66.
17 In Southern Africa the only exceptions to this generalisation seem to be Lesotho, Malawi and Zambia.
18 A. Adebajo, “Natives are Getting Restless”, Mail and Guardian, 15 August 2009.
19 Mkandawire, “Thinking about Developmental States”, 289–313.
20 Sally (Classical Liberalism, 28) argues that this conception of the state's role is alien to those steeped in the classical liberal political economy tradition, as opposed to its modern descendant in formalised, mathematical, neoclassical economics. He argues that the classical liberal tradition accords a central role to the state in establishing and enforcing the basic rules of the game for market participants, but draws the line at state intervention designed to propel specific market outcomes. Naturally, the latter conception is at odds with Mkandawire and other adherents to the ‘developmental state’ paradigm.
21 Chabal and Daloz, Africa Works.
22 Ibid., 142.
23 They note that Asian societies, by contrast, have generally acquired the technological and bureaucratic forms often without acquiring political openness. Ibid., 145.
24 Ibid., 145–62.
25 Herbst, States and Power in Africa.
26 UNCTAD, Economic Development in Africa, 1.
27 Ibid., 56.
28 Ibid., 23.
29 Some caution should be exercised in interpreting this result since UNCTAD does not measure re-exports, which at least in the Southern African case account for a substantial percentage of ‘intra-African’ trade. (Ibid., 24 and note 10).
30 Table 7 of UNCTAD's Economic Development in Africa Report (32), lists the 25 main bilateral intra-African trade partnerships by value and top 3 products. Of those 25, only 3 do not feature South Africa, Nigeria or Kenya, and those 3 are North African trading relationships. South Africa features no less than 16 times; Nigeria 6 times (2 of which are with South Africa); and Kenya twice (1 of which is with South Africa). UNCTAD (34) notes that whilst the table reveals some evidence of diversification in intra-African trade relative to the continent's trade with the world, it nonetheless remains highly concentrated in Southern Africa and around South Africa in particular.
31 Ibid., 32.
32 WTO World Trade Statistics 2008, http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/statis_e/its2008_e/its08_toc_e.htm.
33 Inter-industry trade signifies trade across industries, for example resources exchanged for manufactures. Intra-industry trade occurs within industries, for example varied products within the chemicals sector.
34 Trade diversion can occur when external tariffs are maintained, whilst tariffs are lowered only for partners to the trade arrangement.
35 World Bank, Trade Blocs.
36 This process was a substantial factor behind the unravelling of the original East African Community, as Kenya attracted manufacturing investment and relocation at the expense of Uganda and Tanzania. It also partly explains why South Africa continues to ‘compensate’ its customs union partners for their membership of SACU.
37 North-north integration schemes will not suffer from agglomeration since intra-industry trade is a strongly established feature of such arrangements; similarly in north-south schemes inter-industry trade is the basis.
38 Collier and Venables, “Trade and Economic Performance”.
39 To use the terminology contained in the 2009 World Development Report issued by the World Bank, developing “density” in urban conurbations is retarded.
40 However, they also note that whilst reducing border barriers between contiguous states with small markets would favour development of a few urban centres, at the national level it would reinforce the agglomeration impacts highlighted in the previous paragraph.
41 Bauer, From Subsistence to Exchange.
42 Lesser and Moisé-Leeman, Informal Cross-Border Trade.
43 Collier and Venables, “Trade and Economic Performance”. Adherents to strategic trade theory would add that it also offers the potential to build regionally, and potentially globally, competitive industries. However, since this theory concerns industries that are global in nature, it has very limited (if any) applicability to the African context.
44 Monopoly refers to a single producer, monopsony to a single supplier.
45 Sally, Classical Liberalism, 46–8.
46 Overseas Development Institute, “Regional Integration in African, Caribbean and Pacific Countries”.
47 The accession of relatively poor countries into the European Union in various waves provides strong evidence of such convergence effects.
48 Sally, Classical Liberalism, 40–50.
49 Bauer, From Subsistence to Exchange.
50 Gilpin, Global Political Economy, 355.
51 Gilpin (Ibid.) notes that North American economic integration, whilst more intense in the degree of economic interactions than Europe's, has not acquired the latter's institutional forms. He ascribes this difference to geopolitical factors, specifically the need to bind France and Germany after the Second World War and the relative absence of such an imperative in the North American case. It is difficult to imagine intra-African security conditions approximating those of postwar Europe.
52 A limited parallel here is the longstanding, if stalled, Asia-Pacific goal of ‘open regionalism’. According to Garnaut (Open Regionalism and Trade Liberalization, 27–8), this approach is based on three premises: (1) non-discriminatory reduction of protection in economies which have the capacity to expand trade as a result of high complementarities or low bilateral transactions costs; (2) expanded provision by governments of regional public goods at lower transactions costs; and (3) market integration driven by profit-seeking business and supported by governments willing to reduce relevant market access barriers. Per the preceding analysis, Sub-Saharan Africa falls short of conditions (1) and (3).
53 Braude, Regional Integration in Africa.
54 Jonyo, “Civil society in regional integration”.