TOWARDS DEEP AFRICAN REGIONAL INTEGRATION, “APEC” AS A COMPARATIVE MODEL FOR AFRICA?

 

Oudebji Mohamed

Faculty of Law and Economics, University of Marrakech-Morocco, moudebji@hotmail.com

 

 Abstract

For more than two decades, the phenomenon of the proliferation of regional integrations has been observed in the five continents of the world, including within the African continent.  Moreover, the current multilateral trade negotiations in the Doha Round of the World Trade Organization (WTO) being paralyzed, these regional integrations (or bilateral or regional trade agreements) are multiplying on a global scale because of the crisis of this Cycle multilateral trade especially, and without forgetting the acceleration of the process of economic globalization.

In fact since the 80s and 90s of the last century, at least, the phenomenon of the multiplication of the number of integrations or agreements which establish, among other things, free trade zones, customs unions and other types of preferential trade agreements.

From a strictly economic point of view, the advantage of regional integration for small countries, most of them developing countries and African countries can be very interesting.  Generally by signing such agreements, developing countries in Africa - for example - hope to export more and attract more foreign capital and foreign direct investment (FDI) to integrate into the global economy, will increase their prospects for growth, employment and improve the standard of living of their populations. In addition to these advantages mentioned above, it will be added, on the basis of an OECD study, that the developing countries, in particular, conclude these regional integration agreements in order to benefit from the relative advantage easier access to markets. In addition to these objectives, these countries are also interested in these agreements in the sense that they hope, above all, to achieve greater integration in the south-south or north-south direction.

With regard to the disadvantages, but without addressing in this introduction the negative consequences resulting from the current proliferation of bilateral or regional agreements, it should be pointed out that this tendency presents, amongst other things, legal disadvantages. For the most part, the main legal problem lies in the overlapping and inconsistency of provisions on the governance of regional integration agreements, notably on the scale of African space.  Hence the complex problem of fragmentation of this space, which is characterized by the existence of many African sub-regional integrations.  It is on the basis of this problem, and because of the lack of progress in both the African region and the WTO, that African countries are obliged to rethink their foreign policies on the issue of Regional integration: whether it is the African continent itself or the rest of the world.

But in the absence of multilateral solutions to this phenomenon of legal overlap caused by the multiplication of these agreements, it is to the APEC model of integration of the interregional turn to find good solutions even if it is adapted to the African socio-economic context.  However, it is necessary to emphasize that the study of the specific APEC example will merely serve as a comparative model to which Africa could be guided to some extent, because there is no unique solution to ensure deep regional integration.

Finally, it is important to remember that it is the idea to think of the conclusion of a future deep African regional integration agreement based on the successful experience of APEC's inter-regional, which constitutes the basic research problem of my present article.

Keywords: Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), regional integrations in Africa, World Trade Organization (WTO)