REGIONAL
INTEGRATION IN
AFRICA:
DECONSTRUCTING
THE STATE,
CONSTRUCTING A
PARADIGM SHIFT
The main contention in this paper is that in
terms of policy making and execution state
actors must accommodate other integrative
forces at work at different levels, whether at the
form of micro-regions, cross border operations,
regional public goods, and non-state actors in
general. That is, a multi-pronged approach,
including the reconstituted state, would better
reflect reality and be more useful.
Predominant characteristics of the postcolonial state in
Africa:
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It has been omnipresent, omnipotent, and
omniscient.
The common qualities usually attributed to the
state are that it must have territory, people,
government, and authority for the legitimate use
of coercive force. Arguably, this is not always
been applicable to states in Africa
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Post-colonial African political elites attempted
to build on the inherited colonial state and in the
process transform it into a replica of the
Western model. The results have been disastrous
as the latter had distinctly different origins and
reference framework.
Political independence was not accompanied by
a reconstruction of the colonial state, a
European construct, to make it more relevant to
the environment and better respond to the
needs of the indigenous peoples. The postcolonial state remained not as an alternative but
as a successor to the colonial state.
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What were some of the preeminent
manifestations of the colonial state that were
inherited by the post-colonial state?
First, the colonial state was authoritarian and
repressive.
Second, it played a major role in the economy,
with an all-dominant public sector.
Third, the colonial bureaucracy, as a major
component of the state, was highly centralized.
Fourth, the Western state system coexisted with
indigenous governance systems and models.
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Fifth, vast amounts of resources were directed at
eliminating all contending political authorities or
divesting them of any meaningful functions. This
included not only opposition political parties but nonstate actors of all hues, traditional institutions and
socio-economic bodies.
Sixth, the spread of the African state resulted in its
presence being felt in all areas of socio-economic life.
Not only within what was traditionally the public sector
but also in most parts of the private sector.
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In terms of performance the state in Africa
has fallen far short of the basics:
It has not proven to be developmentalist – in
this area it is more a part of the problem than a
solution to the problem. Neither have the
economies impacted positively on the vast
proportion of the populations; rather, poverty
has deepened.
Capacity for policy implementation has been
considerably limited and substituted by nongovernmental and faith-based organizations, and
an informal sector growing at exponential rates.
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The sovereignty of the post-colonial African
state is compromised by the fact that it is so
deeply dependent on the ex-colonial powers and
the international community to solve its
developmental and other problems including
those directly associated with regime survival.
The inability of the African state to prevent,
manage and resolve most conflicts, especially
resource-based conflicts, has been a burden to
the international community.
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Similarly, the post-colonial state has
demonstrated limited competences to effectively
resolve post-elections and border conflicts.
The state and regional integration
Regional integration has always been regarded as
a panacea for resolving Africa’s multiple
predicaments, particularly through economic
and political unification. As such, states have
enjoyed almost absolute monopoly of action.
They were:
 The sole parties to the creation of a multiplicity of
specialized, single-purpose, multi-purpose, and generalpurpose bodies for implementing a diversity of
integration policies and programmes at continental,
regional, sub-regional and bilateral levels.
 At the regional level the landscape has been littered
with inter-governmental organizations (IGOs), usually
of a technical character; they also were created by states
which have policy-making, management and oversight
responsibilities on their operations.
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States were the sole actors in the formulation
and implementation of such seminal documents
embodying collective self-reliance and regional
integration as the Lagos Plan of Action (LPA,
1980) and the Abuja Treaty Establishing the
African Economic Community (AEC, 1991).
Abundant are the resolutions, declarations,
protocols, plans of action, statements, and
charters adopted by member states of equally
abundant organizations, all purporting to further
regional integration in the continent.
In terms of the actual performance of these regional
integration entities the results have been mixed. But the
overwhelming verdict from among a wide and varied
range of students of African integration is that the
realization of the fundamental end-goals is as distant as
they ever were.
Persistent problems include:
 The perennial pressing business of the rationalization of
the institutional arrangements for continental
integration persists, first, in terms of the overlapping
memberships of the regional communities and, second,
in the sheer numbers of IGOs in each sub-region; what
is termed elsewhere as the ‘African Spaghetti Bowl’.
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Ratification of protocols has been another area of
concern. Of the 34 protocols and conventions that had
been ratified and entered into force as at May 2005
there was an average of three-and-a half years between
signing and ratification. Nine protocols took five years
or more to come into force and a similar number have
not been ratified by the required number of states to
come into effect.
Some of the economic communities have too wideranging objectives and programming requirements
covering economic, political, legal, social, cultural and
other sectors.
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There has been a massive increase in ‘loads’ assigned to
the regional secretariats just as in the instance of the
national states themselves. These emanate from four
sources, namely, the original economic integration
agenda, new political/human security engagements
(conflict prevention and management), the expanded
mandates of existing treaties, and continental demands
especially as regards the AEC Treaty and the AU.
There has been a tendency for member states to assign
responsibility for emergent areas of cooperation to the
regional organizations.
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The expansion in the scope of the integration agenda is
not commensurate with the financial and other
wherewithal at the disposal of regional secretariats.
There remain inadequate capabilities and limited
resources both for strengthening internal capacities and
for programme implementation.
The problem of inadequate capacities and capabilities
for formulation, implementation, coordination and
monitoring of integration policies and programmes is
also prevalent at the national state level, i.e., the
institutional architecture at this level is woefully fragile.
Yet, it is precisely at this level that ultimate
responsibility for implementing protocols etc. and
integration programmes rests.
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An integral aspect of this condition is the
problem of building regional integration
objectives and programmes into national
development frameworks. Or, at a minimum,
the coordination of policies and programmes so
as to ensure consistency between governmental
actions at national levels and commitments at
regional levels.
Contours of a Paradigm Shift
The evidence adduced in the paper reveals some
of the shortcomings of state-managed regional
integration in Africa. To a great extent, the
inherent drawbacks are to be found in the
character of the post-colonial state for in this
approach it is assumed that an effective regional
integration can only be built on an effective and
capable state system.
Through the decades the limelight has been
heavily focused on states and the formal actions
adopted by them in furtherance of integration
goals and objectives at sub-regional, regional and
continental levels. Inter-governmentalism and
institutionalism held sway - on the part of
academics and researchers, non-academic
commentators, and policy analysts alike.
The last two decades or so have seen attempts
by a dedicated group of academic researchers to
shift the focus away from the state to other
actors and from the centre to other levels of
activity. According to this New Regionalism
Approach (NRA) the focus ‘should not be only
on state actors and formal regionalism but also
on non-state actors and what is broadly referred
to as ‘informal regionalism’ or ‘regionalism from
below’.
Other grounds for the NRA include the following:
 First, it was important that the previously dominant
model which almost exclusively concentrates on formal
institutional frameworks should be challenged if for no
reason than that states had proven themselves not fit
for purpose, as glaringly shown earlier.
 Second, older approaches do not reflect what is
happening on-the-ground but accept without
questioning the ‘often optimistic and unrealistic
accounts of what state actors say they are going to do to
build regions.’
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Third, these other approaches do not have any
relationship with the realities of regionalism
besides demonstrating the chasm between ideal
and reality.
Fourth, most mainstream studies are of Western
origins (dealing with the European Union)
which serve as reference models and ideal types;
it is against these experiences that regionalism in
Africa is often assessed. On the contrary, the
NRA is grounded on the need to ‘unpack’ the
state ridding it of Western conceptions.
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Fifth, the track record of formal regionalism and
intergovernmental regional organizations has
not been impressive, resulting in a lack of real
genuine interest in them by both national policy
makers and regional/continental policy
implementors. In contrast, informal processes
are dynamic and produce visible results.
The conclusion that follows is that the
conventional ‘top-down’ preoccupations of the
institutionalists/intergovernmentalists need to
be domesticated through a ‘bottom-up’
emphasis.
In line with reality on-the-ground linkages
between the two must be established, both for
more meaningful theory-building and for policy
design. Not only is the state in Africa here to
stay (as elsewhere) but it will continue to play a
leading and dominant role in defining,
supervising and directing regional integration. As
shown in the massive body of literature, nonstate and mixed-state actors are also here to stay.
So it is a question of straddling the two and
building bridges.
The challenge is to recognize the existence and
contributions of other actors than states, to
accommodate them, and to maximize their
contributions. As formal and informal dimensions of
integration are commonly intertwined, a fuller picture
of regional integration can emerge only when the two
sets of processes are accepted as overlapping. Needless
to argue that the separation between state and non-state
actors is artificial, worse still where the place of nonstate actors is completely ignored, as happens in
conventional approaches to regional integration.
The paper ends with an outline discussion on
regional public goods as a case illustrating many
of the arguments made in this paper and to
which precious little attention has been paid in
the literature.
An increasingly related subject is that of the cross-order
economy and the ‘ghost trade’, that is, unrecorded
unofficial trade which is so prominent across African
borders. In order to incorporate the benefits therefrom
regional economic communities such as ECOWAS and
SADC have designed programmed activities and set up
appropriate structures within their secretariats to deal
with the subject. Within the context of regional
integration in Africa the erstwhile Cross-Border
Initiative, the Growth Triangle Project, and the West
African Borders and Integration Initiative are
experiences worthy of closer study.