African leaders repeatedly demonstrate a tendency to seek ever larger units of co-operation for problems that are essentially domestic in nature. There are over 30 regional integration treaties in West Africa alone, of which the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) are the most well-known. Elsewhere some member states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) also belong to the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the Economic Community of the Great Lakes Countries, the East African Community (EAC) and the Southern African Customs Union (SACU).

Most countries embarked upon regional integration schemes in the belief that larger economic units would be better able to compete and participate in the world economy. African countries such as Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Malawi, Lesotho and Swaziland are landlocked and therefore dependent upon the co-operation of their coastal neighbours. Yet, it is evident that regional integration arrangements in Africa to date have failed either to increase trade or to enhance the region’s overall economic growth — with the limited exception of SACU. In fact, between 1970 and the early 1990s, intraregional trade as a percentage of total exports of member countries actually declined in most major regional groupings. Not only has intraregional trade stagnated — in other words, countries do not export more to one another — but the continent has also experienced increased marginalisation in international trade. Finally, regional economic groupings have failed to attract foreign direct investment, the key requirement for economic growth and development.

There are a number of obvious reasons for this state of affairs. Central among them is the fact that African countries have not succeeded in diversifying their economies, with dependence upon single primary export items such as cocoa and oil rising, not falling. This situation reflects the low potential for complementarity in goods and services and also provides the reason for the exception to this rather dismal state of affairs in the form of SACU. The Customs Union’s success is largely due to the relatively diversified nature of the South African economy, to the extent that other SACU member countries absorb about 25% of South Africa’s manufactured exports while also providing 10% of its total imports — unprecedented on the rest of the continent.

Nor is it evident that regional security arrangements have contributed either to domestic security or national and regional stability. Under Nigerian military leadership, ECOWAS has been the most active and interventionist region, engaging in a flurry of negotiations, facilitations, peacekeeping missions and monitoring engagements. But for several years academics and commentators have questioned whether the ECOWAS intervention in Liberia and even in Sierra Leone have effectively prolonged these conflicts and intensified suffering rather than the reverse. Bear in mind that several years of ECOMOG military intervention could not prevent Charles Taylor from assuming power and pursuing his national and regional destabilisation and extortion policies as president of Liberia.

At first blush, Southern Africa appears to have a dismal conflict management record, with the region divided between activists and mediators, led by Zimbabwe and South Africa, respectively. Yet, the degree of police, customs and migration co-operation that is evident and growing in the region is more important than most commentators realise. Much of this is bilateral in character, or occur through the Harare-based Southern African Regional Police Chiefs Co-operation Organisation (SARPCCO) that also serves as the regional base of Interpol. In the absence of regional agreement on the modalities of bringing peace to a troubled neighbourhood, the reliance upon more modest arrangements that support the extension of state administration and governance may well pay off in the longer term. The extent of potential systemic political violence in countries such as Swaziland, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, its recurrence in Lesotho and the continuation of wars in Angola and the DRC, however, serve as a reminder of exactly how fragile and weak SADC actually is.

It should be apparent, as the African Development Bank argues, that Africa’s regional integration arrangements have suffered from both design and implementation problems that could be summarised as too large, too soon and too shallow. SADC, with all its early promise after the liberation of South Africa, epitomised these mistakes when it accepted the DRC as a member, a move that seriously undermined the capacity of the region to move forward on even the most basic of agreements without the acceptance of changes in the way the countries relate and interact with one another.

Most African regional integration schemes evidence a lack of regional and national monitoring of the implementation of decisions. SADC is no different, with its small secretariat in Gaberone, dependent upon sectors run on an ‘over and above basis’ by national government officials in member countries. The long delayed implementation of the SADC rationalisation programme, expected to be approved during an extraordinary summit meeting in March 2001, would go a long way in addressing many of these shortcomings. Governments of member countries are often unwilling to cede authority to regional bodies, although ECOWAS and its recently established Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management, Resolution and Security is, at least on paper, significantly ahead of other African regional organisations. The result is a lack of resources and power by regional secretariats to implement decisions. Finally, the lack of infrastructure in much of Africa, including Southern Africa, implies excessive transaction costs that limit trade and investment and inhibit intraregional integration. The latter is an area that is being addressed through initiatives such as the Maputo and Beira corridors and the Trans-Kalahari Highway Project, all of which seek to rectify Southern Africa’s regional infrastructure deficits.

African leaders and donors alike may need to make hard choices to rationalise the existing overlapping, often nominal regional schemes. The most important candidates in Southern and East Africa relate to SADC and COMESA. The latter extends from Egypt to the north along the east coast of Africa to Swaziland. With South Africa refusing to join COMESA, Mozambique having suspended its membership and Tanzania in the throes of leaving, some rationalisation is already apparent. Elsewhere in West Africa, the move towards the integration of ECOWAS and WAEMU will see a single currency in place by 2004 to replace the existing nine currencies in the subregion, including the CFA franc used in eight former French colonies — a highly ambitious undertaking.

The second requirement is to accept the principle of variable geometry within which regional integration among some member states on select issues can ‘move’ at a different speed to others. In this manner, the development of common policies within a region will not be delayed while smaller groupings can move faster. Such a flexible approach, for example, could open the door for SACU to become, in effect, a more integrated component within SADC, moving at a much more rapid pace than the larger grouping.

It is evident that African subregional schemes such as SADC and ECOWAS have to change to an outward orientation by using regionalisation as a vehicle to participate in the international economy, not as a bulwark to defend against globalisation. Such an approach would be a reversal of the historical establishment of African subregional arrangements as protective enclaves to facilitate regional trade and industrialisation through import substitution. An outward orientation implies harmonising and implementing policies on trade, investment, the movement of people, transport, and others. It does not imply seeking to institute new policies at the regional level — as has so often happened at the insistence of donors. It also implies tackling the impediments to regional development through the provision of infrastructure projects such as roads, railways, communication and information technology systems.

JAKKIE CILLIERS is the executive director of the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, South Africa.