Priming regional integration in Africa: The vision, the mission and the practice

Priming regional integration in Africa: The vision, the mission and the practice - - - Costantinos, published by ECHOAfrica MAgazine

Today, humankind stands on an extraordinary, and perhaps, seductive sets of dilemma: a global lifestyle and value system in which the 21st century has ushered in unprecedented global wealth; yet, such a lot that is all lavishly squandered, while some African nations are haunted by an oppressive present -- an embodiment of diseases, famine, wars, and devoured natural environment. The interconnectedness of people and good governance locally and its impact on integration were manifested by how seemingly minor incidences can turn into genocides of mind boggling proportions that continue today two decades after Rwanda in DRC, South Sudan, Central African Republic; fracturing the foundations of social accord in distant communities.

According to UNECA, tremendous efforts have been exerted in Africa’s regional integration efforts in key areas. These include efforts towards continental market integration (the Tripartite FTA initiative involving COMESA, EAC and SADC, the AU Summit Decision to fast track a CFTA; the Minimum Integration Program (MIP); the Program for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA); continental financial institutions; the Africa Mining Vision (AMV), the African common position on migration and peace and security). African states have also committed to mainstream regional integration at the national level as a vehicle for pulling off Africa’s regional integration. Developments in key areas across the RECs include free movement of people and right of establishment, but member States should still strive to ensure the fulfillment of their commitments to these supplementary continental positions and instruments on migration and the free movement of people. On the macroeconomic policy convergence arena, Africa is making progress in implementing monetary cooperation programs, highlighted by COMESA’s regional payment system to facilitate intraregional trade

African nations believe that infrastructure is vital to advancing Africa’s integration agenda, supporting economic growth, reducing poverty and achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Africa’s prospects for transformation will be brightened by investments in infrastructure. According to a UNECA report, “The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) with the African Union Commission (AUC) has completed a study on the regional norms and institutional framework to foster the development of the various trans-African highways, which was reviewed by an expert group meeting in September 2011 in Addis Ababa. The meeting proposed an Action Plan, which was adopted by the African Ministers of Transport and subsequently endorsed by the AU Assembly. Many of the new railway development projects under way in Africa are based on the framework of the Union of African Railways, which encourages standard gauge railways. The Yamoussoukro Decision has increased air links among many African countries through operations of major African airlines. Its implementation was boosted by the decision of the third Conference of the African Ministers of Air Transport in 2007 in Addis Ababa to entrust to the African Civil Aviation Commission the role of executing agency.

African nations have also launched initiatives to promote regional cooperation in energy development, trade and capacity building. A baseline for renewable energy database has been developed for the region. MIP is a strategic framework to accelerate programs and activities of the RECs to boost continental integration. It was developed by the AUC with the RECs based on a study by the AUC in 2009. The concept of MIP was adopted by the African ministers in charge of regional integration at their fourth Conference at Yaoundé, Cameroon, in 2009. PIDA, which was adopted by the Heads of State and Government in 2010, contains a framework for meeting infrastructure demand. It has components addressing projected infrastructure gaps and bottlenecks based on supply and demand forecasts, institutional deficiencies and options for identifying, preparing and funding projects.

In line with the Abuja Treaty, the Heads of State and Government of the AU approved the hosting of the African Investment Bank, the African Monetary Fund and the African Central Bank, by Libya, Cameroon and Nigeria, respectively. AMV—a transparent, equitable and optimal exploitation of mineral resources to underpin broad-based sustainable growth and socio-economic development—was adopted by African leaders at the 2009 AU Summit

Nevertheless, much depends on the commitment and ability of states to transform the vision into practice. Developmental state advocates emphasize the stewardship role of the state while liberals and neo-classical economists are concerned with the state’s guiding functions. However, these are not only differences in political theory. At their heart lie different perceptions regarding the relation between knowledge and power. In the modern economic system, guiding often refers to policies and institutions that maintain the economic system and enable it to function effectively. Its underlying philosophy of governance, claiming its capitalist heritage, is that the state should be prevented from doing so, since it can never have enough information to undertake detailed guidance of economic activity. Guiding is restricted to macro processes and the international institutions that determine such policies and processes. These tangential issues raise several questions on Africa integration.

• Does governance of African economic and social integration enter societal processes in Africa as an external ideology, constructing and deploying its concepts in sterile abstraction from the immediacies of indigenous traditions, beliefs and values? Do ideas of integration come into play in total opposition to, or in cooperation with historic national values and sentiments?
• In the struggle over the establishment of new gubernatorial norms and procedures for African economic and social integration, do leading institutions equate the articulation of their ideas and agendas with the production of broad-based concepts, norms and goals, which should govern their integration initiatives?
• Does governance of African economic and social integration signify change in terms of the transformation of the immediate stuff of partisan politics into a new kind of political activity - an activity mediated and guided by objective and critical standards, rules and principles?

The attention for governability of African economic and social integration is based on the concern about abject poverty and the sustainability of integration-based development supported by international financial institutions. If this is to happen, a predictable and transparent framework for policy design and all enabling environment for citizens' participation and private initiative, must exist. The institutional setting and the decision-making process in which this process takes place is essential, together with the norms and values on which they are based. Such integration hence connects the norms, procedures, and institutions that must exist for effective, efficient and open public policies on African economic and social integration.

Unanswered questions of African integration:

In 1991, I was invited to undertake the ALF/GCA study on political transition in Africa. Coming right after the Arusha Declaration on Popular Participation, a landmark contribution to the debate on the role of civil society, I took on the task with enthusiasm and vigor. Three years later, under the auspices of UN and EU, I took a task of two formidable responsibilities. One was to undertake studies to revitalize the role of African civil society in the UN new agenda for African development and to appraise what the future holds for the democratization process in Africa. These launched my engagement with integration talk in Africa in earnest.

Because discussions leading to African futures tend to be one of dejection, the so-called post-Cold War political history of the continent is fast replacing African economics as the morbid art or science not both. Nevertheless, caution, not cynicism, should be the craft as has been amply demonstrated by the recent growth episodes of the continent. While participants in the complex traffic web of African futures could be torn between professional caution and the genuine desire for a better future, repeated attempts to dispel the prevailing gloom of integration by pointing to the bright spots of the current episode of economic growth to check the overall drift towards ‘non-integration’ have not yielded to popular demands.

This raises some fundamental questions. What do we mean by African integration in the first place? Does integration have indigenous roots? Lurking in the background of all these questions is the rather disturbing one: is perhaps all this talk of African integration an academic or a public relations exercise?

Although Africa is lumped as a political community, it is also a continent, where various nationalities who speak over 2000 different languages, enjoy varied cultures, and inhabit their own territories. Africa is also a new continent modeled under the totalitarian rule of white colonialists and military regimes that were handpicked to replace them. They exhibited a degree of coercive power deployed both for intimidating their populace and territorial expansion. Carrying arms became a sign of an all-encompassing martial culture that brewed military discipline coupled with radical ethnic ideology to breed a culture of conformity and uniformity. The stark reality of the new concept of the fragile states also makes this last question less cynical than it would otherwise appear at first sight. African leaders are articulate in stating their integration aims and positions and in promoting them within and through their Governments and their regional institutions.

However, to describe the strategy is problematique for a number of reasons. African States cannot be expected to know all their political objectives and means-ends calculation openly when it comes to issue of integration and one cannot suppose that their formally declared aims and purposes exhaust their ideological and strategic intentions. The way in which they envision the concepts and goals of integration in specific contexts may be at variance with the global “meaning” or “sense” attributed to them. The specific mode of concern about integration may be more processual than revolutionary, more liberal than egalitarian, or more procedural than substantive. Alternatively, it may switch from the liberal code or structural model to the revolutionary code unpredictably - making the task of describing objectives difficult.

The articulation of ideas and ends of integration is not monolithic. It is modulated within the network of domestic and foreign participants - like the goal of securing peace and stability and prevention of balkanization in South Sudan and Central African Republic. However, it also includes discourses and associated objectives designed primarily, though not exclusively, for consumption by a specific public. For these reasons, it is not easy to give an exact account of African integration goals and ultimate political ends pursued by African states. The author has lingering doubts and questions about the status and mission of the dominant regional organizations and at the core of them the African Union, about the nature of the alliance that all point up the need for caution in taking declaratory goals of “African integration” at face value. Nevertheless, one can describe accurately the declared reform goals on the assumption that they are significant, if not exhaustive, indicators of real intentions. This is admittedly a simplifying assumption, but one which provides a point of departure for analyzing an involved and controversial strategy. What does this leave the transition to African integration? Practically nothing but problems to solve: African integration needs to be built virtually from scratch. Politically, its past is more a liability than an asset. In designing the methodology for studies leading to integration and in establishing the analytical foundation, it is important that that we understand the different permutations and trajectories of integration: society-led or state-led integration or a combination of both.

Regional integration is difficult. Eloquent testimony for this is the challenges faced by European integration where Germany is technically driving the process by bailing out the faltering economies. Ultimately, as the UNECA report concludes, “Regional integration initiatives require a large degree of public management and implementation at the national level. Without an absolute commitment at the national level, there can be little progress at the sub-regional level. Doing nothing or too little to implement agreed programs can severely hamper the integration agenda”. Indeed as President Museveni asserted, “Africans today are surviving at the mercy of others. Rationality would have propelled us to use the recovery of our independence to ensure that Africa stands up for the last time. Independence and post-independence African leaders need to bear the historical responsibility for the future tragedies that may befall Africans in the future”.