Assessing Regional Integration In Africa Iii

This report finds that although there are some successes, African countries are still experiencing enormous difficulties in achieving the macroeconomic convergence criteria set by their RECs, such as targets on inflation, debt-to-GDP ratio, and deficit-to-GDP ratio. The assessment also indicates that despite some financial developments, African financial market activities remain shallow, with capital markets characterized by low capitalization and liquidity. The report also provides policymakers with recommendations on how to deepen monetary and financial integration on the continent and create an enabling macroeconomic environment for the continent.

This publication examines progress towards regional integration in Africa; defined as one of the anchoring ideals of African unity and the basis for the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) development framework. The report analyses the current state of the integration process, highlighting where efforts have succeeded or failed. Findings include that progress has been mixed across sectors, regional economic communities and member states; with some notable progress in trade, communications, transport and macroeconomic policy. Overall however, substantial gaps remain between goals and achievements of most regional economic communities, particularly in terms of internal African trade, macroeconomic policy convergence, production and physical connectivity. A summary report is also available (ISBN 9211250927)

This report examines the effectiveness of Africa’s regional economic communities in pushing forward the regional integration agenda towards the objectives of the Abuja Treaty establishing the African Economic Community. A fully functioning African Economic Community will remove all barriers to movement of people, goods and services across the continent, thereby creating a single economic space. The report examines the critical role that institutions in general can play in achieving policy objectives, and the specific role that African institutions perform. The analysis focuses on the regional economic communities, which have been designated by the African Union as the building blocks for achieving the African Economic Community.

This publication comes at a time of renewed enthusiasm for shortening the period of the vision of the Abuja Treaty. The publication's overall objective is to provide analytical research that defines frameworks for African governments, the African Union and the Regional Economic Communities, towards accelerating the establishment of the African Common Market through: the speedy removal of all tariff and non-tariff barriers, obstacles to free movement of people, investments and factors of production in general across Africa, and through fast-tracking the creation of an African continental Free Trade Area.

The seventh edition of Assessing Regional Integration in Africa (ARIA VII) examines how the three elements of regional integration, innovation and competitiveness are interlinked. It explores the prospects for harnessing them within the framework of Africa’s normative regional integration development model oriented to foster structural change. Evidence presented in ARIA VII for a sample of 15 African countries for the period between 1995 and 2010 shows that growth in most of the sample countries has been achieved through factor accumulation rather than through significant improvements with input combinations that are associated with innovation. Based on theoretical and empirical insights, the report makes recommendations as to how further regional integration boost Africa’s capacity for innovation and competitiveness. In addition, the report provides an overview of regional integration trends in Africa, including an analysis of data from the African Regional Integration Index.

In support of progress towards regional integration in Africa, the Economic Commission for Africa, African Union Commission and African Development Bank jointly produce Assessing Regional Integration in Africa (ARIA). The first edition (ARIA I), published in 2004, provided a comprehensive assessment of the status of regional integration in Africa, with subsequent editions focusing on thematic areas. Thus ARIA II examined the rationalization of regional economic communities and their overlapping memberships. ARIA III addressed macroeconomic policy convergence, as well as monetary and financial integration in the regional economic communities. ARIA IV focused on enhancing intra-African trade. ARIA V provided analytical research and empirical evidence to support the establishment of the Continental Free Trade Area and the benefits that African countries stand to gain from it. ARIA VI, "Harmonizing policies to transform the trading environment", carries forward the momentum of January 2012's decision and declaration by addressing the issue of harmonizing rules of origin and trade facilitation to ease Continental Free Trade Area negotiations by member States. The report starts with a brief overview of progress in regional integration, followed by discussions on the harmonization of three key prerequisites to pave the way for a meaningful continental market - rules of origin, trade facilitation instruments and cross-border linkages for information and communications technology.