IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jafrec/v17y2008i3p357-394.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Regional Economic Integration in Africa: A Review of Problems and Prospects with a Case Study of COMESA

Author

Listed:
  • Alemayehu Geda
  • Haile Kebret

Abstract

Major issues of regional economic integration in Africa could be grouped into two interrelated broad areas: issues of implementation and the limitation of insight form both the theoretical and empirical literature regarding the specific approaches that are appropriate for the continent. Implementation issues cover the economic, political and institutional constraints that surface at the implementation stage of economic integration treaties. The approach issue refers to the menu of options available to pursue economic integration. These options range from a step-wise bilateral cooperation to continent-wide integration. This paper critically reviews these issues and tests the determinants of trade flows using the experience of COMESA as a case study. The major conclusions that emerge from the study are, first, bilateral trade flows among the regional groupings could be explained by standard variables as demonstrated by the results of the conventional gravity model. The result shows that regional groupings had insignificant effect on the flow of bilateral trade. Second, the review of the issues indicates that the performance of regional blocs is mainly constrained by problems of variation in initial condition, compensation issues, real political commitment, overlapping membership, policy harmonisation, lack of diversification and poor private sector participation. These problems seem to have made building successful economic groupings in Africa a daunting task, despite its perceived importance in the increasingly globalised world. Copyright 2008 The author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for the Study of African Economies. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Alemayehu Geda & Haile Kebret, 2008. "Regional Economic Integration in Africa: A Review of Problems and Prospects with a Case Study of COMESA," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 17(3), pages 357-394, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jafrec:v:17:y:2008:i:3:p:357-394
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jae/ejm021
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Weeks, John & Subasat, Turan, 1998. "The potential for agricultural trade among Eastern and Southern African countries," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 73-88, February.
    2. Roberto Longo & Khalid Sekkat, 2001. "Obstacles to Expanding Intra-African Trade," OECD Development Centre Working Papers 169, OECD Publishing.
    3. Foroutan, Faezeh & Pritchett, Lant, 1993. "Intra-sub-Saharan African Trade: Is It Too Little?," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 2(1), pages 74-105, May.
    4. Ademola Oyejide, T., 1997. "Regional Integration and Trade Liberalization in Sub-Saharan Africa," Papers 28s, African Economic Research Consortium.
    5. Kemp, Murray C. & Wan, Henry Jr., 1976. "An elementary proposition concerning the formation of customs unions," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1), pages 95-97, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ambetsa Wycliffe Oparanya & Kenneth P. Mdadila & Longinus K. Rutasitara, 2019. "The Determinant of Bilateral Trade in the East African Community: Application of the Gravity Model," International Journal of Economics and Finance, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 11(4), pages 1-15, April.
    2. Nin Pratt, Alejandro & Diao, Xinshen & Bahta, Yonas, 2009. "How important is a regional free trade area for Southern Africa?: Potential impacts and structural constraints," IFPRI discussion papers 888, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    3. Céline CARRERE, 2003. "African Regional Agreements: Their Impact on Trade With or Without Currency Unions," Working Papers 200311, CERDI.
    4. repec:ocp:rpaper:rp1809 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Daniel Gbetnkom, 2006. "On the Empirics of Market Integration in ECOWAS," Journal of Economic Policy Reform, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(4), pages 289-303.
    6. Yongzheng Yang & Mr. Sanjeev Gupta, 2005. "Regional Trade Arrangements in Africa: Past Performance and the Way Forward," IMF Working Papers 2005/036, International Monetary Fund.
    7. Doukoure Charle Fe, 2021. "Trade flows between the West African Economic and Monetary Union's members so little: does exports structure matter ?," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 41(2), pages 816-833.
    8. Liu, Chang & Lin, Dongtao & Liu, Jiawei & Li, Yanran, 2019. "Quantifying the effects of non-tariff measures on African agri-food exporters," Agrekon, Agricultural Economics Association of South Africa (AEASA), vol. 58(4), April.
    9. Jaume Sempere, 2022. "On potential Pareto gains from free trade areas formation," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 24(6), pages 1502-1518, December.
    10. Lawrence Edwards & Neil Rankin, 2016. "Is Africa integrating? Evidence from product markets," The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(2), pages 266-289, March.
    11. Songfeng, Cai & Yaxiong, Zhang & Bo, Meng, 2014. "The Impact Analysis of TTIP on BRICs—based on dynamic GTAP model considering GVC," Conference papers 332528, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    12. Festus Ebo Turkson, 2012. "Trade Agreements and Bilateral Trade in Sub-Saharan Africa: Estimating the Trade Effects of the EU-ACP PTA and RTAs," Discussion Papers 12/07, University of Nottingham, CREDIT.
    13. Innwon Park, 2006. "East Asian Regional Trade Agreements: Do They Promote Global Free Trade?," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(4), pages 547-568, December.
    14. Lucian Cernat, 2001. "ASSESSING REGIONAL TRADE ARRANGEMENTS: ARE SOUTH–SOUTH RTAs MORE TRADE DIVERTING?," International Trade 0109001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Lohi Julie, 2013. "The Implications of HO and IRS Theories in Bilateral Trade Flows within Sub-Saharan Africa," Global Economy Journal, De Gruyter, vol. 13(2), pages 175-202, September.
    16. Hideo Konishi & Carsten Kowalczyk & Tomas Sjostrom, 2003. "Free Trade, Customs Unions, and Transfers," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 568, Boston College Department of Economics.
    17. Tripp, Robert & Rohrbach, David, 2001. "Policies for African seed enterprise development," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 147-161, April.
    18. Daniel Gros, 1992. "A note on ec trade policy after 1992: The effects of replacing existing national import quotas by community quotas that are“Equally Restrictive”," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 128(1), pages 125-135, March.
    19. Baier, Scott L & Bergstrand, Jeffery H & Mariutto, Roland., 2010. "The Growth of Bilateralism," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 12, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    20. Winters, L. Alan, 1996. "Regionalism versus Multilateralism," CEPR Discussion Papers 1525, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    21. Bouët, Antoine & Cosnard, Lionel & Laborde, David, 2017. "Measuring Trade Integration in Africa," Journal of Economic Integration, Center for Economic Integration, Sejong University, vol. 32(4), pages 937-977.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:jafrec:v:17:y:2008:i:3:p:357-394. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/csaoxuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.