Assessing Regional Integration in Africa IV : Enhancing Intra-African Trade

Abstract

Regional integration remains the key strategy that will enable African governments to accelerate the transformation of their fragmented small economies, expand their markets, widen the region’s economic space, and reap the benefits of economies of scale for production and trade, thereby maximizing the welfare of their nations. Regional integration increases competition in global trade and improves access to foreign technology, investment, and ideas. African leaders thus consider it an important path to broad-based development and a continental economic community, in accordance with the Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community (1991) and the Constitutive Act of the African Union (2000). Assessing Regional Integration in Africa (ARIA) is a major publication of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), produced in collaboration with the African Union Commission (AUC) and other development partners. It is devoted to a close analysis and evaluation of Africa’s progress towards regional integration. ARIA addresses achievements and challenges and considers solutions to improve the implementation of these objectives. This series of reports can be comprehensive or thematic in nature. The current report, ARIA IV, addresses another crucial issue, of intra-African trade, a key agenda of Africa’s integration process.