Towards an African Economic Community: A Performance Evaluation of African Regional Economic Communities
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Date
2005-06
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A.A.U
Abstract
Regional integration has always been an agenda for the heads of states of African nations, since it is
considered as the major step towards an accelerated and sustained development of the continent.
This familiar agenda finally succeeded in establishing the African Economic Community (AEC) in
1994 targeting a continent wide unity in a period of 34 years. Seven regional economic communities
(RECs) were chosen to be the building blocs of the AEC. A performance evaluation of these RECs
conducted in this study showed that ten years after the birth of the AEC no REC has yet to
transform itself into a free trade area. Trade liberalization in terms of tariff and non tariff barrier
removal, trade facilitation, and macroeconomic policy harmonization programmers arc all behind
schedule. Intra REC trade progressed little and dependence on trade with third country is still
predominant. Fitting the gravity equation with panel data and controlling for country pair
heterogeneity, this study confltl11s that the standard gravity variables; national income, distance and
population (as well as explanatory variables such as contiguity, common language and membership
to RECs) determine bilateral trade flows in Africa.
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Keywords
African Regional, Economic Communities