Download or read book What are the prospects and challenges of the COMESA EAC SADC Tripartite Free Trade Area written by Jeremy Raguain and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2019-07-23 with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Academic Paper from the year 2017 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Globalization, Political Economics, grade: 77, University of Cape Town, course: Regionalism in Africa, language: English, abstract: Hailed by Dr. Calestous Juma and Dr. Francis Mangeni “as the most significant event in Africa since the establishment of the Organization of African Unity (OAU)” the T–FTA is understood by many to be a vital step towards establishing the African Economic Community (AEC) (Dari, 2015: 38; Juma & Mangeni, 2015). If successfully ratified and implemented the T–FTA would see the merging of Africa’s thee largest and most successful regional economic communities (REC) – SADC, COMESA and EAC. Consequently, the T–FTA would cover approximately 632 million Africans have a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of between $1.3- $1.6 trillion and a land area that could fit both the United States and China. Undoubtedly, a successfully implemented T–FTA would unleash Africa’s anaemic intra-regional trade level which remains stagnant at 12% (Juma & Mangeni, 2015). Increasing Africa’s intra-regional trade is regarded as a pivotal part of developing its underdeveloped and disconnected economies. Considering the T–FTA’s potential it is hard not to see Juma’s and Mangeni’s point. However, others are not as expectant. Reflecting on how the T–FTA has repeatedly missed its deadlines and considering the varying degrees of failure African regionalism has had in cases such as SADC, COMESA and EAC, it is evident that the T–FTA has a long and uncertain road ahead. Therefore, to comprehensively discuss and evaluate T–FTA’s potential this essay looks at Africa’s history of regional integration (RI). To do so it begins by defining and contextualising RI, regionalisation and regionalism in Africa. The essay then deliberates over ‘new’ regionalism’s variants in Africa, discerning that the T–FTA and its RECs represent ‘open’ regionalism’s clear dominance. Subsequently, the discussion analyses the ‘episodes’ of African regionalism to contextualise COMESA’s, SADC’s and EAC creation and enable an insight into Africa’s integration track record. Thus highlighting the T–FTA’s context and viability. Following this, the essay unpacks the T–FTA’s raison dêtre and then discusses the views on its, potential, progress and challenges. Ultimately, this critical appraisal of the T–FTA serves to not only understand the actualities of Africa’s largest ongoing attempt at RI, but to also show that scholars of African regionalism must strive away from Afro-optimism and Afro-pessimism towards what Mo Ibrahim calls Afro-realism.
Download or read book Prospects and Challenges in the Formation of the COMESA EAC and SADC Tripartite Free Trade Area written by Lawrence Othieno and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The stalemate of the multilateral trade system in addressing key trade and trade related issues over the years have mounted pressure on World Trade Organisation (WTO) member states to search for alternative solutions. This pressure has directed countries' attention and efforts towards bilateral and regional trade arrangements as an immediate intervention to resolve some of the stagnated issues at the multilateral level....With regard to the proposed tripartite Free Trade Area (T-FTA) among COMESA-EAC and SADC member states, it is one among the many regional economic communities (RECs) that have emerged over the years. This paper tries to examine some of the complexities and inter-linkages in reaching a tripartite free trade agreement in serviceds and goods, as well as infrastructure development" --Abstract.
Download or read book From Cape to Cairo written by and published by . This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Trade Trajectories of the East African Community EAC Within the African Continental Free Trade Area AfCFTA written by Michael Masiya and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This exploratory study examines the export potential of the East African Community (EAC) within the new African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and the impending COMESA-EAC-SADC Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA). The research aims to determine the EAC's export potential, identify key products with strong export potential, and recognize the challenges and opportunities present within this context. The EAC's active role in AfCFTA negotiations, both benefits and potential concerns associated with the AfCFTA for EAC member states, are presented. Preliminary analysis of EAC member countries (Uganda, Tanzania, and Burundi) highlights significant unrealized export potential, particularly within agricultural, mineral, light manufacturing, and textile sectors. The study underscores the need for comprehensive strategies and robust policies to optimize the EAC's export potential within the AfCFTA, serving as a valuable resource for policy and strategy development.
Download or read book Innovation Regional Integration and Development in Africa written by Samuel Ojo Oloruntoba and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-07-26 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume discusses the role of innovation and regional integration in economic development in Africa. Over the past five decades, post-colonial African countries have struggled to break loose from the trap of poverty and underdevelopment through the adoption of various development strategies at regional, national, and continental levels. However, the results of both national and regional efforts at advancing development on the continent have been mixed. Although the importance of agglomeration and fusion of institutions have long been recognized as possible path to achieving economic development in Africa, the approach to regionalism has been unduly focused on market integration, while neglecting other dimensions such as social policy, mobility of labor, educational policy, biotechnology, regional legislation, manufacturing, innovation, and science and technology. This volume investigates the link between innovation, regional integration, and development in Africa, arguing that the immediate and long term development of Africa lies not just in the structural transformation of its economies but in the advancement of scientific and innovation capacities. The book is divided into four parts. Part I addresses the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of innovation and regional integration in Africa. Part II presents case studies which examine how regional economic institutions are fostering innovation in Africa. Part III of the book deals with sectoral issues on innovation and integrated development in Africa. Part IV sets the future research on innovation, regional integration, and development in Africa. Combining theoretical analysis and a comparative, interdisciplinary approach, this volume is appropriate for researchers and students interested in economic development, political economy, African studies, international relations, agricultural science, and geography, as well as policymakers in regional economic communities and the African Union.
Download or read book African Economic Integration written by Hoda Ahmed Dorra and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: In 2015, Member States of COMESA, EAC and SADC signed the Tripartite FTA to integrate their three RECs into a single market “from Cape to Cairo”. The agreement came in response to many challenges that faced the three communities in their integration programs, specifically challenges related to market integration and overlapping membership. Using qualitative data, this paper studies the economic integration model of COMESA, and the Tripartite FTA The paper argues that many of the challenges that faced COMESA within its integration plan have been accounted for within the Tripartite FTA, especially the problems related to overlapping membership and economic development of Member States. However, for the tripartite integration plan to be successful, it is necessary that it replaces the original three RECs on the long run, in addition to becoming the foundation upon which the Continental FTA is built in order to create a broader form of economic integration in the continent.
Download or read book The COMESA EAC and SADC Tri partite Free Trade Agreement written by and published by . This book was released on 2012* with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tri-partite initiative in and for Africa has been accompanied by high levels of optimism since its political endorsement in 2008. It provides for an opportunity to resolve a host of problems with regards to regional integration in Eastern and Southern Africa. The overall aim of this study is to explore the prospects and challenges towards realising the Tri-partite Free Trade Area (T-FTA) in and for Africa. This study is pragmatic and implicitly seeks to uncover how the T-FTA could contribute to the African Regional Integration Project (ARIP), given the challenges that regional integration face in Africa. Regional integration has a long and rich history in Africa, which started at the inception of independence. Unfortunately, Africa's attempts at regional integration have been weak since the start and persist in its superficial nature with little developmental impact. The reasons for the lack of meaningful integration in Africa are wide-ranging and span national, regional and system level analytical viewpoints. They encompass areas such as developmental levels, political will, respect for regional architecture, overlapping membership and the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). These factors impact on the integration process in Africa and explain in varied ways why there has been little comprehensive economic integration. The starting point was to define the complex concept of regional integration. The dominant factors that define and affect regional integration in this study arc that it is a state-based exercise, driven by economic integration, and influenced by the global political economy of the day. It was determined that Africa has adapted its regional integration strategies according to the shifts and influences in the global political economy on states, emanating from the post WWII period to the present day.
Download or read book Comesa and Sadc written by Padamja Khandelwal and published by INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND. This book was released on 2004-12-01 with total page 43 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Regional integration has been seen in Africa as a means of encouraging trade and securing economies of scale. This paper examines in detail the prospects and challenges for trade expansion in the two most prominent arrangements in eastern and southern Africa: the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). It finds that possibilities of growth in intraregional trade may be limited, but that the two arrangements offer opportunities for member countries to gain policy credibility for trade reforms and tariff liberalization and to address structural weaknesses. In this regard, the negotiation of the Economic Partnership Agreements with the European Union can also have a significant impact.
Download or read book New Panel Data Evidence on Sub Saharan Trade Integration written by Jana Riedel and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The COMESA-EAC-SADC Tripartite FTA, formed in 2011, is supposed to be a milestone towards Africa's continental trade integration. This study analyzes the impact of regional integration among the Tripartite countries on their bilateral imports before that date to evaluate the latest integration efforts. We estimate an extended gravity model on a large panel of 51 African countries using yearly observations from 1995 to 2010. We proxy existing formal trade barriers by sample average data of tariffs on imports from the world as well as indicator variables for the membership in regional FTAs. We control for various other potential determinants of trade and discuss different sets of effects. We emphasize that modeling importer- and exporter-year effects matters for the results of our coefficients of interest. The estimates are not robust with regard to the estimation technique. We detect a direct positive impact on imports when joining one of the three FTAs in each of the loglinear specifications. However, an FTA status does not show a clear-cut import enhancing effect in the Poisson regressions. Whereas tariffs are not significantly correlated with imports in the loglinear framework, they show a strong negative correlation throughout the multiplicative models including several robustness checks.
Download or read book The Development of Africa written by Olayinka Akanle and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-10-25 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume analyses many of the real development challenges confronting the African continent, presenting fresh and current objective examinations, narratives, interpretations and pathways to the continent’s development. It interrogates and answers established, critical, current and pragmatic problems confronting Africa today, and provides workable pathways out of the development problems, so that scholarship, policy and practice will be positively impacted. This volume adds great depth and extended breadth to the knowledge base on development of Africa. It provides excellent resources for academics, scholars, student, policy makers and all those interested in issues affecting Africa’s development.
Download or read book The African Continental Free Trade Area Potential Economic Impact and Challenges written by Mr.Lisandro Abrego and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2020-05-13 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political momentum towards Africa-wide free trade has been intensifying. In March 2018, over 40 countries signed the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement. Once fully implemented, the AfCFTA is expected to cover all 55 African countries, with a combined GDP of about US$2.2 trillion. This SDN takes stock of recent trade developments in Sub-Saharan Africa and assesses the potential benefits and costs of the AfCFTA, as well as challenges to its successful implementation. In addition to increased trade flows both in existing and new products, the AfCFTA has the potential to generate substantial economic benefits for African countries. These benefits include higher income arising from increased efficiency and productivity from improved resource allocation, higher cross-border investment flows, and technology transfers. Besides lowering import tariffs, to ensure these benefits, African countries will need reduce other trade barriers by making more efficient their customs procedures, reducing their wide infrastructure gaps, and improving their business climates. At the same time, policy measures should be taken to mitigate the differential impact of trade liberalization on certain groups as resources are reallocated in the economy and activities migrate to locations with comparatively lower costs.
Download or read book Assessing Regional Integration in Africa V written by and published by UN. This book was released on 2012 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fifth of the series (ARIA/V) has come at a time of renewed enthusiasm for shortening the period of the vision of the Abuja Treaty. Its overall objective is to provide an analytical research publication that defines frameworks for African Governments, the African Union and the Regional Economic Communities, towards accelerating the establishment of the African Common Market through: the speedy removal of all tariff and non-tariff barriers, obstacles to free movement of people, investments and factors of production in general across Africa, and through fast-tracking the creation of an African continental Free Trade Area
Download or read book The COMESA EAC SADC Tripartite Free Trade Area written by Manuel Guilherme Júnior and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book African Union written by Mwangi Kimenyi and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Attempts at regional integration in Africa date back to the pre-independence era, when the decolonization agenda was the main factor driving regionalism. During the immediate post-independence period in Africa, there were many attempts towards unification. A number of African leaders, among them Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, and Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, were strong advocates of the Pan-Africanism movement and were instrumental in the establishment of the Organization of African States (OAU), the predecessor to the African Union (AU). At the regional level, there have been numerous attempts to establish regional blocks designed to reduce barriers to trade and restrictions on the movement of people across national boundaries. Although African regional integration efforts date back many years, overall progress has been slow and has faced many setbacks. Economic development is a significant dimension of regional integration. Around the world, building functioning regional markets has been the key to unlocking greater economic opportunity. Market development necessitates working across borders, and historically the most successful markets have been those that have effectively and efficiently spanned countries and regions. The ancient Silk Road comes to mind, as do burgeoning markets in Europe and Asia. A crucial part of unlocking economic potential is spatial planning--building infrastructure and institutions where they are needed most. Although regional integration is inherently political, economic considerations must drive the process.Today, African regional integration appears to be gaining considerable momentum. Several of the Regional Economic Communities (RECs), among them the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the East African Community (EAC), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), have seen progress in their efforts, as discussed below. Significantly, broader efforts at continental integration are also gaining ground, most notably through the landmark Abuja Treaty that resulted from the Final Act of Lagos in 1991. During the last AU Summit held in January 2012 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the heads of state agreed to fast track the establishment of a Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) by 2017. This push for closer integration is further evidenced in the announcement of the 2008 tripartite agreement among three of the well-established RECs in Eastern and Southern Africa, the EAC, COMESA and SADC, to merge and form the Tripartite Group or African Free Trade Zone. However, many challenges remain to achieving full integration of the RECs, let alone the establishment of a supra-regional or continental FTA. This paper catalogues the progress made towards regional integration in Africa, with a focus on the various obstacles these efforts have faced. In the section that follows, we start with a discussion of the importance of regional integration to Africa, highlighting some of the political and economic benefits that are expected from regional integration and previewing some of the more significant challenges. Section III provides a brief status report of the current state of regional integration on the continent. Section IV discusses the main challenges that have slowed regional integration efforts. Section V concludes with some observations about the future of regional integration in Africa and the way forward.
Download or read book Post Neo Functionalism Pan Africanism and Regional Integration in Africa written by Ernest Aniche and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ghost of Berlin Conference (1884-1885) that partitioned Africa into specific spheres of influence has continued to haunt Africa many years after colonialism, reinforcing the fragmentation of African economies. The shadow of the Conference is still with us such that after over a century of pan-Africanism and five decades of regional integration in Africa, African economies remain decimated. This explains the reason why the announcement of the proposed Tripartite Free Trade Area (T-FTA) of the EAC-SADC-COMESA in Eastern and Southern Africa was received with both optimism and pessimism. The optimism concerning the prospects of the proposed T-FTA, though often exaggerated, is not totally unfounded as it could help African Economic Community (AEC) strengthen intra-RECs, and inter-RECs integration by reducing the incidence of multiple memberships and proliferation of regional economic groups and subgroups, among other things. With the use of qualitative method and some indices from the secondary sources, and by propounding a new theory of post-neo-functionalism, a combination or a synthesis of neo-nationalism and post-nationalism, this paper concludes that the proposed Tripartite Free Trade Area (T-FTA) would be confronted with some challenges capable of overcoming, impeding or confounding these prospects. The paper seeks to deconstruct and problematize neo-functionalism in African integration as well as rejects neo-functionalist, one-size-fits-all, state-centric or inter-governmental approach to integration in Africa, and rather recommends bottom-top, humanistic, people-centric or private-sector-driven approach to integration, or people-to-people integration. The study is essentially prognostic.
Download or read book Challenging the Frontiers of African Integration written by Juma V Mwapachu and published by E&d Vision Publishing Limited. This book was released on 2014-10-04 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: CHALLENGING THE FRONTIERS OF AFRICAN INTEGRATION: The Dynamics of Policies, Politics and Transformation in The East African Community ISBN 978 9987 521-81-4 Author: Juma V. Mwapachu About the Book The basic premise of this book is that regional integration in Africa offers great promise in addressing endemic poverty and in advancing Africa's integration in the global economy. Based on hands on experience of the author and a body of research focusing on the East African Community, the book breaks the path in providing a wealth of information and analysis of cutting edge topical issues on Africas, s emergent promise, as well as on the challenges that that confront Africa and EAC in particular in achieving deeper economic and political integration. The EAC model of integration, with its unique and lofty but overly ambitious goal of political federation, evidently offers exciting possibility for the broader quest for the African Economic Community and the the United States of Africa. However, there also clear lessons, marked by challenges of zero sum game mindsets and sovereignty sensitivities that slow down and even hamper what would make the EAC process more robust and rewarding and with important bearing on Africa's own continental ambitions. A notable feature of the book is the coverage of the historical development of the COMESA-EAC-SADC Tripartite Framework, a novel idea in the attempt to address the dysfunctions of multiple memberships of Regional Economic Communities in Africa and the pragmatic and progressive approach towards building a fast paced movement for the realization of the African Economic Community.
Download or read book OECD FAO Agricultural Outlook 2016 2025 written by OECD and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2016-07-04 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2016-2025 provides an assessment of prospects for the coming decade of the agricultural commodity markets across 41 countries and 12 regions, including OECD countries and key agricultural producers, such as India, China, Brazil, the Russian Federation and Argentina.
