ENFORCEMENT CHALLENGES TO THE AFRICA'S REGIONAL ECONOMIC COMUNITIES' LAWS: A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE TO EU (original) (raw)

Regional Integration in Africa: Prospects and Challenges for the European Union

Since the end of the World War II, the establishment of regional blocs and groupings has increasingly become a prominent feature in international politics. This is a result of the acknowledgement that regional integration, which these groups seek to achieve, has also become a proven framework for development worldwide. Along the lines of promoting growth through regional integration, Africa established the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963. Though it lasted, the OAU failed to successfully integrate African economies, solve conflicts within and among African states and live to the developmental aspirations for which it was created. Therefore, the OAU was transformed into the African Union (AU) in 2002. Similarly, other smaller regional cooperation initiatives have emerged on the continent. The Cotonou Partnership Agreement (2000) between the European Union (EU) and the African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of states has declared the promotion of regional integration a p...

The applicability of the European process of regional integration to the African context : an analysis of institutional and policy frameworks in the European Union and in the African Union

2016

© University of Pretoria vi A casual look at Europe’s and Africa’s experiences of integration suggests that they share certain similarities. Their respective institutional frameworks (Commissions, Parliaments and Councils) bear certain similarities and they share a similar policy objective of developing economic communities through the pursuit of market integration (the European Economic Community (EEC) following the 1957 Rome Treaty, and the African Economic Community (AEC) according to the 1991 Abuja Treaty). These noted similarities have generated a debate on whether or not the European experience of integration has diffused to and informed Africa’s practice of regional integration by its continental body the African Union (AU). This study brings a contribution to this debate by investigating a number of channels through which the EU experience of integration could have flowed to the AU, drawing from the policy transfer and diffusion literature. It investigates the process leadin...

The African Union and African Regional Integration

R/evolutions: Global Trends and Regional Issues, 2014

This paper focuses on the role that regional integration can play in the economic development of the African continent. In assessing the great potential of regional integration in Africa, there is a great need to assess the extent of the interaction between factors like the political sovereignty of individual countries, the impact of the force of globalization and the need for economic independence for African countries and the ultimate goal of integrating the African economies. There is need to focus on the relative successes or failures of the current regional integration blocs even as the continent envisages the need for the creation of new regional integration areas.

Regional Integration for Africa: Could Stronger Public Support Turn ' Rhetoric into Reality'?

2016

Regional integration has been a development strategy for Africa for decades. The African Economic Community’s founding treaty in 1991 provided a framework targeting full political and economic integration by 2019. Many African countries have signed on to foster political and economic cooperation. The promotion of social and cultural development, economic integration and trade, and free movement of persons and goods are fundamental principles for continental and regional organisations, including the African Union (AU), the African Development Bank (AfDB), and regional economic communities (RECs), with the ultimate goal of creating a unified continental market.

Impact of the European Union on Regional Integration in Africa

Marinov, E. 2013. Impact of the European Union on Regional Integration in Africa. In: Financial and Monetary Economics – EFM 2013. Centre for Financial and Monetary Research at the Romanian Academy, pp. 229-239. ISSN 2344-3642.

The development and dynamics of regional integration in Africa are severely influenced by the transformation of the trade relations imposed by the Cotonou agreement. Economic relations now based on unilateral trade preferences provided by the EU are envisaged to be based on Economic partnership agreements that should regulate trade and cooperation establishing new trade regimes between the EU and ACP regions selected by clear criteria. They also promote regional integration efforts and impose measures to support developing partner regions. A decade after the start of the negotiations for the EPAs, the impact on regional integration is still unclear. Although EPAs aim at the promotion of regional integration their immediate impact is even greater fragmentation of existing RECs. The report examines the principles, history, and current state of negotiations as well as the twofold effects of EPAs on regional integration efforts in Africa.