Cross-Border Initiative in Eastern and Southern Africa : Regional Integration by Emergence
Over the past few decades Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries have tried various arrangements to promote economic integration. Most of these arrangements have focused on promoting greater intra-regional trade. Nevertheless, despite some increase in...
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| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2012
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2000/09/12356864/cross-border-initiative-eastern-southern-africa-regional-integration-emergence http://hdl.handle.net/10986/9834 |
| Summary: | Over the past few decades Sub-Saharan
African (SSA) countries have tried various arrangements to
promote economic integration. Most of these arrangements
have focused on promoting greater intra-regional trade.
Nevertheless, despite some increase in intra-regional trade
in some of the groupings (e.g., COMESA, SADC and UEMOA),
overall intra-regional trade in SSA is less than 10 percent
of the region's total trade. In the past decade, some
of the arrangements have also started to focus on promoting
greater intra-regional investment flows (e.g., UEMOA,
COMESA). The experience to date has brought out two key
issues that are likely to shape the debate over the
integration approaches in SSA over the next decade. These
are: a choice between "integration by design" and
"integration by emergence"; and the relative
importance given to the promotion of intra-regional trade
and investment. This article presents a synthesis of the
issues as well as the experience in dealing with these
issues under the Cross Border Initiative (CBI) in Eastern
and Southern Africa and Indian Ocean countries. |
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