L’engagement dans l’intégration commerciale donne-t-il des résultats tangibles ? Principes et application à l’UEMOA d’un indice d’engagement des États

The monitoring of regional integration in Africa is often based on indices combining indicators with heterogeneous perimeters and objectives, to the detriment of their overall coherence. For example, the African Regional Integration Index (ARII) proposed by the African Union (AU) combines compliance indicators with integration policy outcome indicators, national policy indicators with regional policy indicators, and objective indicators with subjective indicators established from surveys. This heterogeneity of indicators is justified by the need to compare the progress of member states of regional economic communities (RECs) following different agendas and rhythms of progress. However, this approach adopted by the AU and other international institutions does not allow a rigorous assessment of the commitment demonstrated by states to achieve the integration objectives officially set by and for themselves. This paper therefore proposes to complement the existing mechanisms for monitoring regional integration in Africa with an index measuring the commitment of a regional economic community?s member states to implement the community texts they have adopted. It sets out the hypotheses and calculation principles underlying this index and applies them to the trade integration process in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU). Index values obtained for each of the WAEMU member states, when compared with trade integration outcome indicators, suggest a marked positive relationship between state commitment to trade integration and its results.