Abstract
The recently launched (July 2019) African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), whose setup begun in 2015, is widely seen as the crucial driver for economic growth, industrialization and sustainable development in Africa. The concluded agreement establishing the AfCFTA provides rules that will govern the movement of merchandise and services across the continent. It sets up the institutional framework that will guide and regulate the CFTA implementation processes. There is a recognition that the current path of economic regionalism in Africa is encouraging but has serious fractures on the continent and the global trading system. In the attempt to achieve an overarching continental strategy for continuous development, there are vestiges of regional economic integration schemes, in the areas of multiple economic alliances, overlapping schemes, the non-implementation of protocols and many other fractures. In an attempt to alleviate these vestiges, the latest wave of continental innovation – AfCFTA – raises a long-standing conundrum for continental order: when are regional organizations useful, and even essential complements to the ends of continental governance for benefit, and when do they threaten or undermine the achievement of these goals? This paper’s contention is that regionalism within Africa is anchored on many theories of integration, among them are functionalism, neo-functionalism, and intergovernmentalism, and based on the European integration experience. But drawing lessons from the enormous, political and economic as well as, security challenges confronting the African Union (AU) and the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), how viable and ready can the RECs be used as ‘vehicles’ in support of the achievement of continental integration in Africa, when they are so ‘gullible’ themselves?
Highlights
The establishment of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is the brainwork of the African Union Commission (AUC), which laid-out a roadmap through deliberations on the need for a free trade area for Africa from 2012 until its official launch in July of 2019
Before we examine the major issues confronting the Regional Economic Communities (RECs), it is imperative that we clarify the concept of regional integration by using the AU as a point of reference towards an overarching continental integration
In terms of the realities facing the AU, the RECs have not been able to accomplish much from 1994, when the African Economic Conference (AEC) Treaty, known as the Abuja Treaty came into force, charging RECs “as the building blocs,” as well as the ‘engines’ that would propel continental integration
Summary
The establishment of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is the brainwork of the African Union Commission (AUC), which laid-out a roadmap through deliberations on the need for a free trade area for Africa from 2012 until its official launch in July of 2019. Population-wise, AfCFTA has a coverage of over 1.2 billion people across the 55 countries on the African continent and, according to WTO estimates, could be the largest free trade area in the world [1] It is International and Public Affairs 2020; 4(2): 53-62 envisaged that AfCFTA will create a single continental market of goods and services and consolidate the gains from regional integration, into a larger Customs’ Union, with the free movement of the factors of production across the African continent. The creation of such a Customs’ Union according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), “will increase intra-African trade by 52.3 percent, and is likely to double that figure, if further nontariff barriers are removed” [2]. The latter parts of the paper are the dimensions of the AfCFTA; the realities and the prospects, as well as the conclusion
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