“Grabbing the ‘Bull’ by the ‘Horns’”: A Critical Analysis of the Establishment of AfCFTA

Abstract

The establishment of the Free Trade Area (FTA) covering the whole of Africa is intended to combine the existing Free Trade Areas (FTAs) within the Regional Economic Communities (RECs), to attain maximum gains from trade and bolster AU’s growth and development objectives. But several regional blocs, including the Tripartite Free Trade Areas (T-FTA), have all missed their deadlines set to achieve the objectives of the Abuja Treaty of 1991 in six stages. This means that the launch of the CFTA has become a parallel process with immediate effect since all FTAs and T-FTA are to collapse into the AfCFTA when trading commences. The question therefore is, why hasn’t the AU waited until it can harmonize, that is, combine existing arrangements of trade and the movement of persons, under its “building blocs” concept for continental unity? In launching the AfCFTA by the AU, does such a “hasty act,” tantamount to the removal of layers of complexity in Africa’s existing arrangements? The prevailing continental state system in Africa, according to functionalists, contributes to continental tensions and conflicts because it is institutionally inadequate. Accordingly, it cannot deal with the basic continental problems because it has arbitrarily divided continental society into national units based on territory, and not on the problems (or issues) to be solved. This is because any successful integration project requires autonomous and credible central institutions that can act as motors of acceleration. Employing theories of functionalism and neo-functionalism, this paper is of the view that the attempt to launch the AfCFTA by the AU is an act of rebooting the dormant Custom Unions across the respective RECs. The action by the AU is to arrest their failures, hence “grabbing the bull by the horns,” so as to empower and also embolden RECs to own the regional integration processes and to build resilience against global shocks.