Multimedia

External event

Event

Drivers and constraints to regional integration in Africa: The roles of regional organisations

Fridays of the Commission – 13 May 2016

Regional organisations play important roles in regional integration in Africa. Yet, there remains a major gap between the ambitious commitments or aspirations and the implementation on the ground. Hence the call to look more carefully into what drives – or constrains – regional integration on the continent and to explore feasible ways to carry the regional integration agenda forward.

The AU, RECs and other regional organisations made numerous commitments in support of regional initiatives to tackle challenges among other things that cannot be solved at the national level. Such challenges affect (poor) people’s lives in areas ranging from human security, mobility, trade, public goods and a variety of infrastructure, food security, and financing of climate change adaptation and mitigation. From the perspective of the AU Agenda 2063: the Africa We Want regional cooperation and regional integration will be vital for its implementation.

But as the AUC Chairperson herself has emphasised, “I don’t think Africa is short of policies. We have to implement, that is where the problem is.” So what is holding back implementation? And what can be learned from good practices of effective implementation of regional agreements? These were two key questions of a major first-ever study on the political economy of regional organisations in Africa.

The meeting of the Fridays of the Commission in Addis Ababa on 13 May 2016 will be dedicated to finding answers to such questions. The meeting comes at an appropriate time as the evolving global and continental agendas require adequate African regional action on issues such as climate change, economic transformation, gender equality, the fight against terror and more broadly the realisation of the Sustainable Development Goals. This meeting will be able to tap into the findings of this major study and will benefit from a wide diversity of African perspectives and the vast experience of invited personalities, practitioners and experts in the field.

Please find the final programme of the event here. A recording of this event will be available on this page.

ECDPM’s Geert Laporte will moderate this event, and Jan Vanheukelom will be a speaker.

For more information about this event, please see the information note, the poster and the flyer.

The ECDPM dossier provides more background information on the political economy of regional integration in Africa.

Participants registration and inquiries should be directed to Ms. Ambela Barbara, Email: Ambelab@africa-union.org T: (251 11) 5 182668 or F: ( 251 11) 5 182678 or (251 11) 5 517844

Pour la version française de cette rencontre, veuillez cliquer ici.