The African Regional Integration and Trading Blocs

Abstract

This chapter is perhaps the most important and significant chapter in the book. This is because of the great importance attached to increasing regional integration and trade as an enlargement of regional markets. The chapter focuses on the perspectives of international trade as a foundation for regional integration, regional integration schemes and their processes, and the African regional integration and its regional trading blocs. The trading blocs are meant to enlarge African markets and to be pillars and building blocks of the African economic community. The chapter also examines the importance of proximities—geographic, economic, political, and administrative—in helping to promote regional trade. Regional trade has grown faster than international trade in the last five decades, and successful regional trading countries are the wealthiest in the world today. Those with low or limited regional trade—like countries in the African and the Middle East regions—are the poorest countries today. The seven major African trading blocs are fully described in the chapter.