Dissolve Internal Barriers, Africa Told


The Times of Zambia (Ndola)

March 12, 2002
Posted to the web March 12, 2002

Business Reporter


AFRICAN countries will have to show greater resolve to dismantle internal
barriers to integration if the African Union (AU) is to become effective and
efficient.

This is according to the third African Development Forum Consensus Statement
released at the close of the meeting in Addis Ababa.

The statement says there are powerful obstacles that stand in the way of
integration and these needed to be overcome.

These include the small and disjointed nature of African economies and their
common dependence on the export of primary commodities and their weak
industrial and agricultural base.

Other obstacles include low levels of intra-regional trade, problems arising
from the unequal distribution of benefits from integration schemes, vested
interests in incomes from trade tariffs and weak capacities from
implementing treaty commitments.

"In the coming years it was imperative that Africa takes rapid, sequenced,
realistic and irreversible steps to realise these commitment and goals and
turn economic integration from an aspiration into an effective reality," the
statement reads.

It stressed the need for convergence of fiscal and monetary policies to
serve as a foundation for a monetary union.

It noted however that to date this vital aspect of integration had been
relatively neglected.

"For effective macro-economic convergence and integration, countries will
have to cede some degree of sovereignty in economic policy making for
collective interest," the statement reads.

The ADF was also concerned about the proliferation of Regional Economic
Communities (REC) which had created problems including those associated with
overlapping membership to multiple RECs and the financial burden of multiple
subscriptions to different RECs.(ADF3)



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