The signing of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) has been seen as a major breakthrough for African development by African countries and organizations as well as external observers of African development (Aniche 2020, and Mene 2020) In particular, these entities see AfCFTA as a solution to the problem of overlapping membership of existing regional economic integrations, get rid of cumbersome regulation, boost manufacturing, and create jobs. The UN Economic Commission of Africa for example has projected that the AfCFTA will boost intra-African trade by 52.3% by 2020. This is not the first time African countries have proposed a new organizational and institutional structure for development. African countries have signed at least 13 regional trade agreements (RTAs) for intraregional trade since 1959. However, the track record of these groups has been relatively mediocre compared to RTAs elsewhere (Ofori-Amoah 2019, International Trade Center, 2019). For example, from 1960 to 1962, only 5.6% of Africa’s total export was intracontinental, compared to Latin America’s 16%, Asia’s 21%, North America’s 26%, and Europe’s 61.4% (UNCTAD, 2009). Thus, Africa has the lowest percentage of intracontinental trade in the world (Ofori-Amoah, 2019). The question is what has been the track record of these pre-AfCFTA integrations and what are the implications for the new AfCFTA? The paper evaluates the performance of existing African integrations and their implications for the AfCFTA.
Mots clés : regional economic integration|African Development|African Continental Free Trade Agreement
A105174BO