The artificial lines drawn across the continent by the colonial powers randomly cut across societies, 'ethnic' groups, clans and even families. That’s why we created the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA). The problem is how regional decisions essentially derived from continental frameworks are implemented country by country. An Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) report released in July 2004 says Africa is laying the groundwork for the establishment of an African Economic Community, which, like the European Union, could increase … For the next three years, Africa needs to create 60 million jobs, but we can only target 1 million jobs for now. The ambitious and transformative aims outlined above clearly require public planning and regulation. But to be appropriate, effective and 'owned' by all the participating governments and their populations, such arrangements can only be achieved through processes of giveand-take in democratic and accommodating negotiations. creation of a customs union. Until June this year, Nigeria and Benin were holding out. Are regional initiatives a substitute or a complement to national and local policy objectives? In Southern Africa in particular, with its comparatively small economies, r egional integration was meant to play a development of a common market. The aim of regional integration is to uplift the least developed countries, and this is the beauty of the African Union. No, it cannot be top-down, because none of the frameworks will work if you do not empower the local communities. Such aims and methods cannot and will not be promoted by 'market forces' which function according to different business profitability' criteria and narrow time-frames and through competitive not cooperative processes. The Strategic Aims of Developmental Regionalism. Doesn’t that contradict the objectives of the regional frameworks, which are top-down? Agenda 2063 is the blueprint and master plan for transforming Africa into the global powerhouse of the future. On the other hand, there are also real political, social and cultural commonalities and shared experiences amongst the people within the new African nations. One of the critical factors of success in regional integration is having everybody on board. These would be public-public partnerships, that is between governmental and parastatal enterprises and institutions and public trusts, and cooperatives, worker/ employee collectives, community-based, mutual aid, and other forms of popular collective self-organisation and joint endeavours. Ibrahim Mayaki, chief executive officer of the the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), which is currently transforming into the African Union Development Agency (AUDA)—the implementing arm of the AU. Implemented today, such an alternative model of integration would not only be a practical living example of different means and paths to successful development but could also be, or become, part of a broader challenge to the globalised, liberalised, corporate-serving and market-driven paradigm (or model) now dominating the world. It is of particular importance important to intensify African competitiveness in the regional and Global Markets by reducing the high cost of doing business in Africa , exacerbated by deficiencies in the transport infrastructure. It works with the media in Africa and beyond to promote the work of the United Nations, Africa and the international community to bring peace and development to Africa. If it was a road, it was one linking a mine to a port. AUDA will also focus on resource mobilisation and the connections between sectors to avoid a siloed approach, which as you know is a key aspect of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 2.4.2.1. But the now-hegemonic or dominant view at different levels of power and spheres of influence, in Africa and internationally, is that 'Regional Integration is A Good Thing'. If the consensus is strong—and that takes time to build—we can have strong agreements and start thinking about an implementation roadmap. Such practices would all contribute towards higher levels, more evenly spread and equitable development across the region. Tb provide effective bases for more rounded and viable development, African countries need to be combined within wider, more realistic and rational economic entities. The aim is to move rapidly towards an integrated trade area with a common external tariff applied by about twenty member countries stretching from Mauritius in the south, through east and central Africa and as far as Egypt in north Africa. That way we boost intra-Africa trade. At one level, this is based on political and moral issues of equity and justice. Given the lopsided strengths of African economies—with SMEs concentrated in more economically advanced countries—it appears poorer countries will benefit the least from this programme. Doesn’t Africa need more than 1 million new jobs? These would include financial transfers (plus profit re-investment), technology and management skills transfers, labour training and rights, and health and environmental protections, as well as local production inputs and product-sourcing to create backward and forward linkages with domestic producers. It is within this context that internal tariffs and non-tariff barriers that could hinder trade between the Partner States have to be eliminated, in order to facilitate formation of one large single market and investment area. and gender . “Colonialism was a system of illicit financial flows,” you said recently at an event at the UN headquarters. It took time to be designed and to get everybody on board. It reverses that trend of extractive-based infrastructure by focusing on regional projects and transport corridors that ease movement and spur development. In an interview with Africa Renewal’s Kingsley Ighobor in New York Dr. Mayaki spoke on AUDA’s role in Africa’s development agenda and discussed regional integration and his agency’s plan to create a million jobs. AUDA-NEPAD was created in Niamey, Niger, in July 2019, during the African Union summit. These reports provide in-depth analyses of progress towards fulfilling the objectives of Africa’s regional integration in broad and thematic areas, in accordance with . But other types of 'combined' efforts and agencies would be even more important for deeper and more inclusive, more pervasive and multi-layered development. This would entail the democratic negotiation and creation, the co-existence and coordination of varying but overlapping sub-groupings of countries, where demanded, in different sectors and spheres of cooperation and within differing frameworks and timetables. The economies structured by colonial interests were internally distorted (socially and economically) and disarticulated (lacking internal linkages and dynamics) and excessively extroverted (turned outwards). “Pan-Africanism, as an expression of continental identity and coherence, distinguishes regional integration in Africa from other regions in the developing world” (McCarthy, 1995, p. 14). It also makes economic sense to regroup the large number of these arbitrarily created countries in Africa which are frequently economically non-viable and environmentally unsustainable. As a result, African governments have concluded a very large number of regional integration arrangements, several … Overlying all of these programs are the more recent proposals in the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) for a comprehensive program for the whole continent. Rather, in order to accommodate national political and economic particularities in certain sectors, and even local social and cultural specificities, regional integration might have to reflect a degree of 'variable geometry' with regard to participation in certain agreements. In the case of Southern Africa this relates also to the human and economic costs incurred by neighbouring countries in the struggles against colonialism and especially against apartheid. The Transnational Institute (TNI) is an international research and advocacy institute committed to building a just, democratic and sustainable planet. So, all the infrastructure projects, except in countries and places where colonizers were thinking of settling in a definitive manner, all other infrastructure projects were geared toward extraction, extraction, extraction! 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