Abstract
As the contributions to this volume show, regional integration in Africa is still in process—perhaps, as Scott Taylor suggests, it is a learning process. If we follow Samuel K. B. Asante, Piers Ludlow, and other contributors in giving up the ideal of an African Union (AU) that someday looks just like the European Union (EU), it is difficult to predict from here what form regional integration in Africa will take. It is worth taking stock, however, of what we can learn from regional integration so far, and looking ahead to how the process can be turned more to the benefit of all of Africa’s one billion people.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See, for example, Thandika Mkandawire and Charles C. Soludo, Our Continent, Our Future: African Perspectives on Structural Adjustment (Dakar: Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa [CODESRIA], 1998);
Sayre P. Schatz, “Structural Adjustment in Africa: A Failing Grade So Far,” Journal of Modern African Studies 32, no. 4 (1994), 679–92.
See, for example, Franz Heidhues and Gideon Obare, “Lessons from Structural Adjustment Programmes and Their Effects in Africa,” Quarterly Journal of International Agriculture 50, no. 1 (2011), 59. The Lagos Plan of Action (LPA) did not explicitly critique the agricultural policies of structural adjustment programs (SAPs), but placed a much greater emphasis on food security and self-sufficiency than on using agriculture to achieve poverty reduction or income growth (both of which might be more efficiently achieved through export cash crops), and this focus was likely an implicit criticism of SAPs.
Organisation of African Unity (OAU), Lagos Plan of Action for the Economic Development of Africa, 1980–2000, adopted April 1980, http://www.merit.unu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Lagos-Plan-of-Action.pdf (accessed April 28, 2015), Chapter 1. By comparison, see, for example, the focus on poverty reduction and income growth and consequent favorable assessment of privatization and cash crops in Luc Christiaensen, Lionel Demery, and Stefano Paternostro, “Growth, Distribution, and Poverty in Africa: Messages from the 1990s,” World Bank, June 2002, http://info.worldbank.org/etools/docs/library/94251/Sene_0303/Se_0303/christianensen_demery_growth.pdf (accessed April 28, 2015), pp. 28–30.
See, for example, Gillian Hart, “The Agrarian Question and Industrial Dispersal in South Africa: Agro-Industrial Linkages through Asian Lenses,” Journal of Peasant Studies 23, nos. 2–3 (1996), 258–9;
M. N. Baipethi and Peter T. Jacobs, “The Contribution of Subsistence Farming to Food Security in South Africa,” Agrekon 48, no. 4 (2009), 469–70.
See Marc Wuyts, “Informal Economy, Wage Goods, and Accumulation under Structural Adjustment: Theoretical Reflections Based on the Tanzanian Experience,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 25, no. 3 (2001), 417–38.
See, for example, Mark Gevisser, A Legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the Future of the South African Dream (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), Chapter 34;
Christopher Landsberg, The Quiet Diplomacy of Liberation: International Politics and South Africa’s Transition (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2004), p. 174.
See, for example, Demitris Keridis, “Turkey and the Identity of Europe: Contemporary Identity Politics on the European Frontier,” in Constantine Arvanitopoulos (ed.), Turkey’s Accession to the European Union: An Unusual Candidacy (Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2009), pp. 147–58.
See, for example, John J. Mearsheimer, “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault,” Foreign Affairs 93, no. 5 (2014), 77–89.
For a discussion of the ban and its implications for democracy, citizenship, and the French secular national identity, see Selya Benhabib, Another Cosmopolitanism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 50–61.
Jacob Viner, The Customs Union Issue, ed. Paul Oslington (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 163.
Chalmers A. Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982), p. 19.
Thandika Mkandawire, “Thinking about Developmental States in Africa,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 25, no. 3 (2001), 291, 295–6.
John W. Sloan, “The Strategy of Developmental Regionalism: Benefits, Distribution, Obstacles, and Capabilities,” Journal of Common Market Studies 10, no. 2 (1971), 142. Sloan seems to have coined the term; for additional discussion of developmental regionalism in the African context (aside from discussion in this volume), see, for example,
Sheila Bunwaree, “NEPAD and Its Discontents,” in John Akokpari, Angela Ndinga-Muvumba, and Tim Murithi (eds.), The African Union and Its Institutions (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2008), pp. 227–40;
David J. Francis, “Linking Peace, Security, and Developmental Regionalism: Regional Economic and Security Integration in Africa,” Journal of Peacebuilding and Development 2, no. 3 (2006), 7–20;
Zoleka Ndayi, “In Quest of Regional Integration in Africa: Can the AU/NEPAD Reconcile Economic Plurilateralism with Developmental Regionalism?,” International Journal of African Renaissance Studies 6, no. 1 (2011), 78–93.
S. K. B. Asante, “The Experience of EEC: Relevant or Impediment to ECOWAS Regional Self-Reliance Objective?,” Africa Spectrum 17, no. 3 (1982), 311.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2016 Daniel H. Levine
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Levine, D.H. (2016). Conclusion. In: Levine, D.H., Nagar, D. (eds) Region-Building in Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137586117_19
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137586117_19
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-60157-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-58611-7
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)