Regional integration and regional governance under the new African initiatives: a critical appraisal

Abstract

Africa’s emerging governance, peace and security architecture, comprising the African Union (AU), the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and the Conference on Security, Stability, Development and Co- operation in Africa (CSSDCA), emphasises a new focus on regional integration in the pursuit of Africa’s long- absent economic and social regeneration. The architecture also posits a tentative return to a focus on politics, after decades of pre-occupation with economics. The architecture’s emergence indicates further that democratic norms are alive and well on the African continent. However, a gap between policy and implementation exists. It is argued here that it is not as much the policies themselves that are at fault, as the manner in which they are arrived at and the instruments available for their implementation. This paper contends that the gap between policy and implementation may be filled by regional organisations that: are accountable to and representative of the people they represent, as well as complimentary to the AU and as a result equipped with the institutional infrastructure to bring about AU objectives. To the extent that we can speak of ‘regions’ at all in Africa, where five such entities were designated by fiat of the now-defunct Organisation of African Unity (OAU), this paper aims to assess the progress in regional integration on the continent in the context of the emerging governance, peace and security architecture. The African Development Bank (ADB)1 defines governance as “a process …in which power is exercised in the management of the affairs of a nation, and its relations with other nations”2. This is extrapolated to the continental level by sketching ‘governance’ as the management of continental affairs, and the relations of the continent with the rest of the world, as well as the management of intra-continent relations. Thus, representation is a requirement for the allocation of power in continental politics, and what I have termed ‘institutional efficacy’ relates to the following: Institutions that are organic outgrowths of constructive regional interstate interaction • Institutions that are accountable to the citizens they purport to serve • Institutions that are managed in the wider best interests of the regional membership • Institutions that are streamlined, with the basic aim of implementing stated objectives and • Institutions that complement and facilitate the work of the AU, within a regional setting. The paper begins with a background sketch of the concept ‘regional integration’, as it has progressed on the continent to date, reflecting both theoretical and empirical constraints in the definition of African regional integration. This is followed by a brief account of regionalism’s mixed record to date, including a discussion of impediments to regional integration in Africa as outlined by NEPAD’s ‘Regional Integration Initiative’. Following this, an examination of the proposed relationship between the AU and the Regional Economic Communities (RECs), the interface of regional and continental governance, is conducted. Lastly, the prospects for continental and regional governance within the context of NEPAD and the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) are investigated. This paper is concerned mainly with the political and governance aspects of regional integration.