African regional integration process: some key issues

Abstract

Economic integration can be broadly defined as the process by winch a group of neighboring countries with comparable levels of development, in a spirit of mutual solidarity and the commonality of their interests vis-a-vis the global environment, decide to gradually intensify and deepen their cooperation with a view to accelerating their economic and social development. Thus, economic integration while allowing the concerned countries to better articulate their individual and dispersed resources often utilized in a contradictory manner, will reinforce the efficiency of their development actions within their combined economic space and thereby increase the countries* economic independence vis-a-vis the rest of the world.