Overview on the African Regional Processes

Abstract

Regional integration in Africa is deemed as fundamental by many of the continent’s policymakers and as a result, there is growing support for regional integration in Africa amongst the conti-nent's international development partners and African elites. The success of regional integration, development & cooperation and social policy are dependent on multilateral regional associations of nations. However, little progress has been made, and one of the challenges and criticisms of the institutions’ efforts towards achieving the African Integration Agenda, is overlapping mem-bership. The paper examines the AU and RECs structures and role as regional integration bod-ies. Then, the research discusses and evaluates the challenges, and these regional bodies encoun-ter six decades later. The research asserts that genuine progress towards deeper and swifter inte-gration can only be attained through the active support and participation of Member States.