please do not cite without permission from the authors

More documents

Recommendations

Info

opportunities and improve their competitiveness as against other countries ofthe Centre and their respective peripheries.The logic of this strategy includes restructuring the relations between the EUand its former African colonies known as the ACP countries (Africa, Caribbeanand Pacific). These countries were previously organized within the successiveLomé Conventions (I–IV). But in the year 2000 the signing of the CotonouAgreement opened the way to a series of changes to the previous structure,leading to the signing of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). Thesewere supposed to pave the way for the future establishment of large free tradezones between the EU and various already established regional groups inSub-Saharan Africa (SSA).The drawn-out negotiation processes of the EPAs reflect intensedisagreements about their potential effects. The southern region of the Africancontinent is representative of the polemics which these moves are generating,and of their negative and positive effects on conditions for development, bothfor individual countries and for the region’s most important integration project,SADC (the Southern African Development Community). Since the negotiationsand interim agreements have now gone beyond the opening debates in favourof or against the proposed new framework, it is a fitting moment to ask whatkind of EPAs, or relations with the EU, the countries of the region shouldpursue in order to accelerate their development (Goodison, 2009).2. African regional integration and the new regionalismRegional initiatives in Africa arose as part of the process of gaining politicalindependence; they were supported by a pan African philosophy whichadopted a pragmatic approach towards the various regional groupings thenunderway, treating them as pieces in a continent-wide jig-saw which wouldone day be completed.Decades of structural adjustment, however, as well as the recent impasse ofthe WTO’s trade negotiations, have given rise to a new form of regionalism –one which interprets integration initiatives more as ‘building blocks’ than‘stumbling blocks’ in the broader concept of a liberalization which incorporates2
the whole world. There is growing support for regional integration, understoodas a synonym for economic liberalization in a defined multi-state area, as longas it is not an obstacle but a step on the way towards an eventual deregulationand complete opening up on a world scale on the lines of the currentneoliberal globalization model (Panagariya, 1999; Bhagwati , et al., 1998;Bhalla and Bhalla, 1997).This new notion of open regionalism means at the same time a spatialextension of the concept of region to groupings with a continental or evenintercontinental membership, exemplified in the initiatives towards integrationbetween countries with major differences in their socio-economic levels(North–South regionalism). This idea has given rise to a number of projectssuch as the North American Free Trade Agreement, 1 the Central AmericanFree Trade Agreement, and the currently paralysed Free Trade Area of theAmericas (to include the whole of the American continent), as well as similarlyextensive projects in other continents, between the countries of ASEAN andChina for instance, or between countries in the ACP group and the EUfollowing the end of the Lomé era.While such initiatives have often been interpreted as an intermediate steptowards freer trade and investment on a world scale, their real meaning canalso be seen from another viewpoint – one which sees them as part ofcompeting attempts by the countries of the Centre to maintain and extend theirtrade and investment activities by means of formal agreements with countriesthey regard as part of their sphere of influence (Bidaurratzaga y Colom, 2005,Bowles, 2002; Hettne et al., 1999).In any event, this new pattern of extended regionalism is part of a concept ofintegration which on the one hand one appears to reduce it merely to tradeissues, involving very limited institutionalization beyond free trade areas, butwhich, on the other hand, extends the number of questions which areconsidered to be ‘trade-related’ (including such questions as intellectualproperty, liberalization of FDI, public contacts, competition policy and so forth).1 The North American Free Trade Agreement, in force since 1994, is composed of the USA,Canada and Mexico. The Central America Free Trade Agreement comprises the DominicanRepublic, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua and the USA. Itcame into force in 2006.3
Page 4 and 5: This kind of pattern has come to be
Page 6 and 7: Figure 1. Shares of various groups
Page 8: several writers as evidence of the
Page 11 and 12: the rest of the world, regardless o
Page 14 and 15: of them except Namibia. Namibia’s
Page 16 and 17: Among the questions which most worr
Page 18 and 19: Figure 5. Index of export concentra
Page 20 and 21: 5.2 Related issuesInvestment, intel
Page 22 and 23: separate agreement with the EAC cus
Page 24: multilateral negotiating frameworks
Page 28 and 29: Hurt, S. (2009): ‘Economic Partne
Page 31 and 32: Annexe 1. The three main exports of
Page 33: Annexe 2. Global Competitiveness In

please do not cite without permission from the authors

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?