ODILILE AYODELE
The African Union’s Summit takes place this week from February 18-19, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Many important decisions will be made, including on trade and the economy. In recent years, there has been a growing focus on Africa’s integration as a catalyst to transform Africa’s economic future for the better.
The advent of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is arguably the closest Africa has ever been to continental integration. The AfCFTA, an output of the AU master plan for transforming Africa’s development, Agenda 2063, promises to raise inter-regional trade by over 20 percent in the next decade. Yet, the basic building blocks for the AfCFTA – the free movement of persons, integrated infrastructure and production – have yet to get off the ground meaningfully.
Even discussions around the digital economy ecosystem are moving too slowly to meet the needs of the continent’s citizens. If not for the Covid-19 pandemic forcing African governments to speed up their digital transformation, the continent would still be moving at a snail’s pace in closing the gap. We can garner many lessons on integration from other parts of the world, particularly the Caribbean.
In January 2023, I was lucky enough to be part of a contingent of staff and students from the University of Johannesburg’s Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation who got to travel to Trinidad to meet our counterparts at the University of the West Indies, as well as engage with regional organisations. I made two broad observations on regional integration.
First, air travel in both the Caribbean and Africa (and between the two regions) is expensive and convoluted. Air travel has recovered by more than 60 percent since the Covid-19 pandemic nearly decimated the air transport business, according to statistics by the International Air Traffic Association. But the African market has only marginally recovered.
The main stumbling blocks are taxes and politics and not the airlines. As a result, the African continent is missing out on inter-continental tourist traffic and business linkages. For instance, the distance between Lagos, Nigeria, and Yaoundé, Cameroon, by air, is approximately 90 minutes, but there are currently no direct flights between the two countries. This is a political issue and not a market-driven one.
Similarly, travelling between the Caribbean islands is not seamless. To travel within, and between, Africa and the Caribbean, travellers often have to transit through Europe, the Middle East, and North or Latin America.
In the African context, there cannot be an argument about the lack of a market. According to a 2021 survey by Africa No Filter, 61% of respondents want to travel within the African continent, but 57% of respondents found travel too expensive. The question then becomes if countries cannot connect easily for business or cultural reasons, how do we expect to integrate politically or economically?
The second observation was the embeddedness of extra-regional powers. Throughout Trinidad, and the regional organisations we were fortunate enough to visit, there were several pointers to the influence and power of external influence, particularly the Netherlands, the UK and the US.
Nowhere was this as evident as during our visit to the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ). An interesting discussion with the court staff underscored how decisions outside of the court get made.
The free movement of people within the Caribbean islands came about due to the commercial pressures of the cricket world cup and not because Caribbean leaders saw the need to push this agenda. Ultimately, it ended before the CCJ, when a Jamaican national was denied free passage to Barbados. The court had to set the law on the matter, but there are still reports of uncomfortable instances at border posts.
This was eerily similar to Africa, which only seems to pay lip service to the idea of the free movement of people. All indications are that commercial interests will drive progress towards free movement in Africa. AU leaders would do well to study the Myrie v. Barbados and Freedom of Movement in the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) case to avoid many of the mistakes made by their counterparts in the Caribbean.
Despite its internal challenges, CARICOM is much further than the AU regarding regional integration. CARICOM began with developmental objectives in mind. In Africa’s case, its initial drivers were not developmental.
At this point in history, the continent needs to ramp up regional integration as an important impetus to promoting economic growth. At its current pace, the dream of Agenda 2063 is promising to be a dream deferred because African states are not pushing hard enough to ensure that each of the building blocks of the plan is firmly in place.
The 2019 African Integration Index stresses the fact that African countries are the least integrated with regard to production and infrastructure, despite a slight improvement in trade. The Covid-19 pandemic further worsened the integration outlook but highlights the benefits of working together, as we saw with the Covid response efforts.
Hopefully, this year’s summit will see AU leaders make and implement agile and developmentally driven decisions. Africa cannot afford for outside parties to push us; we don’t need an external guarantor. To get the Africa we want, we need to be proactive and not reactive.
Dr Odilile Ayodele is a Senior Researcher and Head of the Digital Africa Research Unit at the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation at the University of Johannesburg.
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