The AU and Continental Foreign Economic Policymaking in Africa: Institutions and Dialectics on Integration in the Global Economy

Abstract

This chapter takes a critical look at the efforts by the African Union and the continent’s major economic institutions, namely the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the African Development Bank, and the New Economic Partnership for Africa’s Development, in formulating and implementing an effective foreign economic policy. The author argues that in its fifteen years of existence, the African Union has little to show for the economic performance of the continent due to its confused and incoherent foreign economic policy. Compounding the conundrum is the tense dialectic between the extent of economic integration that African states—and their institutions—should seek to adopt within the global political economy. The chapter concludes that the African Union needs to rethink the global integration template it is pursuing and realign it to the realities of the continent’s political economy, especially as it relates to autonomy and self-sufficiency.

Appendices

Box 3.1: Phases and Goals of the African Economic Community

First phase, 1994–99. Strengthen regional economic communities and establishing them where they do not exist.

Second phase, 1999–2007. Freeze tariffs, nontariff barriers, customs duties, and internal taxes at their May 1994 levels and gradually harmonize policies and implement multinational program in all economic sectors—particularly agriculture, industry, transport, communications, and energy.

Third phase, 2007–17. Consolidate free trade zones and customs unions through progressive elimination of tariffs, nontariff barriers, and other restrictions to trade, and adopting common external tariffs.

Fourth phase, 2017–19. Finalize coordination and harmonization of policies and programs in trade and other sectors as a precursor to full realization of the African Common Market and African Economic Community, with all regional economic communities. This phase should result in the free movement of people, with rights of residence and establishment among the regional economic communities.

Fifth phase, 2019–23. Consolidate the continent wide African Common Market resulting from the fourth phase.

Sixth phase, 2023–28. Realize the vision of the African Economic Community, with complete economic, political, social, and cultural integration and with common structures, facilities, and functions, including a single African central bank, a single African currency, a pan-African parliament, and a pan-African economic and monetary union.

Source The African Economic Community Treaty, 1991.

Box 3.2: Highlights of AU Fast Track Projects/Initiatives

• Integrated High Speed Train Network: Connecting all African capitals and commercial centres through an African High Speed Train to facilitate movement of goods, factor services and people, reduce transport costs and relieve congestion of current and future systems.

• An African Virtual and E-University. Increasing access to tertiary and continuing education in Africa by reaching large numbers of students and professionals in multiple sites simultaneously and developing relevant and high quality Open, Distance and eLearning (ODeL) resources to offer the prospective student a guaranteed access to the University from anywhere in the world and anytime (24 hours a day, 7 days a week).

• Formulation of a commodities strategy. Enabling African countries to add value, extract higher rents from their commodities, integrate into the global value chains, and promote vertical and horizontal diversification anchored in value addition and local content development.

• Establishment of an annual African forum. Designed to bring together, once a year, the African political leadership, the private sector, academia and civil society to discuss developments and constraints as well as measures to be taken to realize the aspirations and goals of Agenda 2063.

• Establishment of the Continental Free Trade Area by 2017. To significantly accelerate growth of intra-African trade and use trade more effectively as an engine of growth and sustainable development, through doubling of intra-Africa trade by 2022, strengthen Africa’s common voice and policy space in global trade negotiations and establish the financial institutions within agreed upon timeframes: African Investment Bank and Pan African Stock Exchange (2016); the African Monetary Fund (2018); and the African Central Bank (2028/34).

• The African Passport and free movement of people. Transforming Africa’s laws, which remain generally restrictive on movement of people despite political commitments to bring down borders with the view to promoting the issuance of visas by Member States enhance free movement of all African citizens in all African countries by 2018.

• Implementation of the Grand Inga Dam Project. The optimal development of the Inga Dam will generate 43,200 MW of power (PIDA) to support current regional power pools and their combined service to transform Africa from traditional to modern sources of energy and ensure access of all Africans to clean and affordable electricity.

• The pan-African E-Network. This involves a wide range of stakeholders and envisages putting in place policies and strategies that will lead to transformative e-applications and services in Africa, especially the intra-African broad band terrestrial infrastructure and cyber security, making the information revolution the basis for service delivery in the bio and nanotechnology industries and ultimately transform Africa into an e-Society.

• Silencing the guns by 2020. Ending all wars, civil conflicts, gender based violence and violent conflicts and prevent genocide. Monitor progress through the establishment and operationalization of an African Human Security Index (AHSI).

• Africa Outer Space Strategy. Aims to strengthen Africa’s use of outer space to bolster its development. Outer space is of critical importance to the development of Africa in all fields: agriculture, disaster management, remote sensing, climate forecast, banking and finance, as well as defense and security. Africa’s access to space technology products is no longer a matter of luxury and there is a need to speed up access to these technologies and products. New developments in satellite technologies make these very accessible to African countries. The Brazzaville meeting on aerial space technologies underlines the need for appropriate policies and strategies in order to develop regional market for space products in Africa.

Source African Union, Agenda 2063, First Ten-Year Implementation Plan, May 2015.