This Issues Paper is intended to identify some of the principal issues surrounding African regional economic integration and the African Union. Economic integration in Africa is an imperative if the continent is to achieve its potential, and to participate on equal terms in the global economy.
This paper is concerned with a broad range of issues relevant to regional economic integration, which could be the foundation for the African Economic and Monetary Union. The 1980 Lagos Plan of Action announced a pan-African programme of economic cooperation and integration. It was followed by the 1991 Abuja Treaty which established the African Economic Community. Many of the economic provisions for the African Union are already in place, and in fact African governments have been legally bound to implement a range of steps. It is important to ask, why this process has not matured, and why the same issues are being addressed again at the foundation of the African Union.
The paper seeks to ask, what have been the political and economic factors that have propelled or hindered integration processes around the world? It looks both at the experience of other regions, including Europe, Asia and the Americas, and the history of attempts at economic integration and political unification in Africa. The final section focuses on the challenges of implementing the African Union.
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