This chapter reviews integration among the eight African Regional Economic Communities by comparing their characteristics and progress with three other South-South Regional Integration Arrangements. Three conclusions emerge: (i) slow progress towards meeting overly ambitious objectives; (ii) small changes in the destination of trade across all Regional Economic Communities, indicative of persistent high trade costs and few new manufactured products destined for geographically close markets; and (iii) compared with other South-South Regional Integration Arrangements, the Regional Economic Communities include a high number of provisions not covered in Word Trade Organization negotiations, but these have low legal enforceability. Reasons for this slow progress are explored in the chapter.

This study has been prepared within the UNU-WIDER project on 'Industries without smokestacks', which is part of a larger research project on 'Jobs, poverty and structural change in Africa'.Abstract: This paper reviews integration among the eight African Regional Economic Communities by comparing their characteristics and progress with three other South-South Regional Integration Arrangements. Three conclusions emerge: (i) slow progress towards meeting overly ambitious objectives; (ii) small changes in the destination of trade across all Regional Economic Communities, indicative of persistent high trade costs and few new manufactures products destined for geographically close markets; and (iii) compared with other South-South Regional Integration Arrangements, the Regional Economic Communities include a high number of provisions not covered in Word Trade Organization negotiations, but these have low legal enforceability. Reasons for this slow progress are explored in the paper.