A new dawn for regional integration in Africa

Regional integration has for nearly six decades of African independence been an enduring appeal for the continent as the right strategy for overcoming the economic disadvantages of the small sizes of the African countries, low per capita incomes, sparse populations, narrow resource bases, growing transnational threats, and of making possible a higher rate of economic growth and development.

It is considered as a key driver and the way forward for the structural transformation of African economies. Put differently, regional integration in general is not only desirable, it is necessary if Africa is to reduce poverty, to industrialise, develop intra-regional trade, strengthen capacities to benefit from globalisation, reduce vulnerability in fluctuating overseas markets, mobilise and maximise scarce resources of capital and skills, and finally forge the way to effective African unity, both political and economic.

This has triggered the creation of regional economic communities (RECs) such as the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS) and continental bodies such as the African Union (AU) as instruments of economic and political decolonisation.

Evidence

Evidence tends to suggest, however, that to date, Africa’s regional integration process, unlike that of Europe, Latin America and South East Asia, has not made any appreciable inroads towards the objective of creating a regional economic market, let alone an economic community, despite the human and financial resources deployed. Studies have in recent years attributed much of Africa’s interlocking challenges to the lack of regional integration institutions and studies to bolster the continent’s integration process. For, whereas in Europe the European Union (EU), which is an enduring model of integration, is bolstered by regional integration research and training institutions located in Germany, Belgium, Austria and Greece, and in Latin America, two similar institutes have been established in Argentina and Uruguay to monitor, evaluate and offer training on regional integration, there is no such regional integration institution in Africa to bolster the regional economic communities and the AU.

Sub-regional bodies

The recently created (2010) little-known West African Institute based in Cape Verde confines its operation to the West African sub-region only, while the Institute for Regional Integration and Development established in Kenya in 2011 limits its operation to the East African sub-region. Similarly, the recently established the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) Virtual University focuses its attention only on East and Southern Africa. The creation of a regional integration institution in Africa has, thus, become increasingly necessary as a rapidly changing global environment demands that Africa moves swiftly, and strategically, to achieve regional integration.

It is against this background that the Centre for Regional Integration in Africa (CRIA) has been created. Arguably, it is the first pan-African based regional integration institution whose focus is continental.
Besides, unlike any of the existing African training programmes in regional integration, the CRIA has developed an innovative integrated capacity-building programme. It offers training in regional integration to strengthen the capacities of broad range of key actors drawn from the national, regional and continental levels, business organisations, state and non-state actors, in the identification of effective formulation, implementation, review and update of integration policies and programmes.

It is a dedicated African centre for regional integration that not only seeks to meet the challenges of region building and regional integration in Africa, but also offers the much-needed leadership at all levels in this key aspect of African development strategy.

Registered in March 2009, the CRIA was inaugurated by the former President , Mr John Dramani Mahama, in June 2013. Dr Mary Chinery Hesse, a distinguished and eminent retired Senior International Civil Servant and current member of the Pan-African Network of the Wise, serves as the Chairperson of the CRIA Board of Trustees .

Mandate

The centre seeks to serve as the focal point for research and analysis on issues, problems and policies relating to integration process at the national, regional and continental levels to generate the necessary data for effective policy formulation and implementation. The CRIA also provides consultancy and advisory services to African states at the national, sub-regional and continental levels, as well as technical assistance for promotion of regional economic integration in Africa. Significantly, too, the centre offers academic programmes in Regional Integration and African Development at the Certificate, Masters and Executive Masters levels.

Besides meeting the challenge of capacity constraints, the CRIA has been created to contribute to a search for a second look at Africa’s model of region building and regional integration against the background of the rapidly changing global economy. Today’s effective forms of region building and regional integration are qualitatively different from that of the 20th century with which African countries have been preoccupied. It is most fitting and proper that the centre is located in Ghana, historically the vanguard and advocate, indeed the Mecca of Pan-Africanism, regionalism and African unity since the 1920s.

Academic programme

Recognising the paramount need for sustained and effective collaboration to promote a brand-new programme in regionalism and integration as a key element of African development strategy, the CRIA, in partnership with the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), has mounted a unique and rewarding Master of Arts Degree Programme in Regional Integration and African Development (MRIAD) for the 2018/2019 academic year. This is being advertised in recent weeks in the Daily Graphic.

The rationale for the CRIA –GIMPA Masters programme is based on the crucial need for highly skilled and trained experts in region building and regional integration to provide intellectual, technical and professional inputs to bolster governmental, inter-governmental and non-governmental efforts to realise Africa’s integration ambitions. A graduate programme in African regionalism is urgently required in the face of new development frameworks such as the highly cherished United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), AU Agenda 2063, the Continental Free Trade Area and the rising might of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). Indeed, the recent global changes have created an urgent need for more scholarly attention to regional integration, especially in the global South. Besides, CRIA’s evidence-based research informs the design of the Masters degree programme to develop human capacity for bringing the agenda of regional cooperation and integration in Africa home for national development.

Since 2011, the CRIA has been publishing annually, monographs, studies, policy papers and newsletters as modalities for the dissemination of regional integration research findings, capacity development and consultancy services under a general theme: Issues in African Regional Integration. Capacity –building workshops were organised for the ECOWAS Commission in July 2009; Principal Officers of the Nigeria Ministry of Foreign Affairs in September 2010, followed by another batch of Principal Officers of the same ministry in December 2011. The centre launched, in 2010, a special publication on Europe, Africa and the Economic Partnership Agreements.

In December 2013, in collaboration with the Ghana National African Peer Review Mechanism Governing Council, it launched a timely and pivotal study titled, The African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) as Africa’s Innovative Thinking on Governance: A Decade of Ghana’s Experience. In May 2017, the CRIA organised a highly successful Regional Integration Issues Forum Policy Dialogue to commemorate the 42nd anniversary of ECOWAS. An impressive keynote address to this conference was delivered by the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

Partnership

The centre is establishing partnership with the AU, the RECs and private sector institutions such as the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI). The CRIA has not only shared its academic and integrated training programmes with the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF), it has also established a partnership with the foundation to build the capacity of non-state shareholders to “Bring West African Integration Home for National Development”. Besides, a CRIA-ECOWAS commission partnership proposal, involving training of selected ECOWAS staff and technocrats of ECOWAS member states, is being considered by the Commission.

Briefly stated, the CRIA is seeking to open a new dawn for meeting the challenges of regional integration in Africa. Much of its activities will be directed to changing African countries’ approach to regional integration in order to adapt to today’s effective forms of region building and regional integration. Attention will also be focused on restructuring the regional economic integration schemes, as a formal European Union–like structure which African countries have been mimicking over the years is neither useful nor appropriate to the African regional capacities.