four reasons they haven’t delivered

In a rapidly unraveling world, regional integration could be a source of resilience for the African continent.

The African Union agreed in 2019 to create the African Continental Free Trade Area, based on the building blocks of eight regional economic communities. These are the Union of the Arab Maghreb, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa), the Community of Sahel-Saharan States (Cen-Sad), the East African Community (EAC), the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

But integration is progressing slowly.

The World Bank released a report 45 years ago saying that a larger regional market would increase production and reduce “long-term barriers to development.” These obstacles included infrastructure shortages, payment and settlement systems and political risks.

They persist to this day. Based on my research over more than thirty years of researching regionalism in Africa, I think there are four main reasons for this.

• Integration experiments suffer from colonial dependence.

• Integration has failed to address the informal nature of entrepreneurship in Africa.

• African countries see integration as complementing, rather than reimagining, pre-existing colonial arrangements.

• Regional integration in Africa is under pressure from missions, making its objectives unclear.

I argue that institutions created for this purpose by African leaders should facilitate the continent as a space in which every African can thrive and reduce the tendency of national politics to trump shared progress.

The burden of colonial dependence

At the conclusion of the Berlin West African Conference in February 1885, the European powers and the United States of America appointed themselves “to regulate the conditions most favorable to the development of commerce and civilization… in Africa.”

In 1973, a landmark study of foreign investment in the East African Common Market concluded that most postcolonial regional integration arrangements in Africa were ‘based on pre-independence ties and institutions’.

For example, the East African Common Market was the successor to the British colonial East African Federation and the predecessor to the current East African Community. The Community’s recent efforts to expand beyond this original geography have come at the expense of cohesion, endangering it.

ECOWAS was the first to transcend patterns of colonial dependency. Uniquely, it included countries that gained independence from France, Portugal and the United Kingdom. Fifty years after ECOWAS was founded, recent developments suggest that the experience is still uncomfortable.

One reason for this is that the post-colonial association or partnership agreements between the European Union and the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries are intended to grow and extract goods sent to Europe for processing. From there, African countries import the processed goods at higher prices. This makes it impossible for Africa to grow industries that can employ its own people to process what it produces.

Informal nature of business activities

Throughout Africa, colonial rule flourished as indigenous businesses were expelled or taken over. Those who survived did so by going underground or operating informally. Since independence, most governments on the continent have failed to correct this historical pattern of criminalizing African businesses.

As recently as 2023, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa estimated informal cross-border trade in Africa at “between 30% and 72% of formal trade between neighboring countries.” This excludes much of Africa’s business community from the benefits of regional integration.

Integration as an add-on, instead of a shared future

African countries continue to engage in regional integration, not for the sake of reimagining it, but as a complement to pre-existing colonial arrangements. Recent estimates put the number of these schemes at over 156. For a continent of 55 countries, this means there is a confusing overlap of both membership and mission.

In response, many have called for rationalization of Africa’s regional integration arrangements.

The AU’s decision to recognize eight regional economic communities was intended to respond to this. But it hasn’t eliminated the overlaps. For example, Tanzania and the DRC belong to the EAC and SADC respectively. Eritrea and Sudan were simultaneously in IGAD, Comesa and Cen-Sad. French-speaking West African countries belong to both ECOWAS and the Economic and Monetary Union of West Africa, better known as l’UEMOA.

What should be done next?

The resentment among the population against the ongoing colonial projects in parts of Africa may be great, but it takes political imagination to convert it into constructive energy.

Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger left ECOWAS after a break in relations with the colonial power, France. However, they still belong to l’UEMOA, whose currency system is supported by France.

It will take more than formal market access rules or tax harmonization to shrink informal trade. For example, women account for more than 70% of informal cross-border trade in Africa. An effective solution to this problem will require better border regimes and an end to policies that discourage women from pursuing legal entrepreneurship.

Tackling mission creep

The rationalization of African integration arrangements may already be quietly underway. A lot of attention is paid to membership overlaps. For example, since 2000, ECOWAS has lost 25% of its membership, reducing the number of member states from 16 to 12. Rwanda has withdrawn from Eccas and Eritrea from IGAD.

But the problem may be a lack of clarity in the mission of African integration arrangements. In addition to economic issues, African regional integration regimes have also taken on the burden of collective security and governance. The results were inconclusive and destabilizing. The withdrawal in 2025 of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger from ECOWAS is a recent example.

Without a clear political commitment to a shared future, African governments have failed to manage the contradictions between economic integration, collective security and governance in a single mission. The time has come for them to decide what to prioritize so that regional integration in Africa finally has the opportunity to prove and improve the continent’s prospects.