TITLE:
“Grabbing the ‘Bull’ by the ‘Horns’”: A Critical Analysis of the Establishment of AfCFTA
AUTHORS:
Joseph K. Manboah-Rockson
KEYWORDS:
Regional Integration, Functionalism, Continental Free Trade Area, Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), Priority Action Clusters, Building Blocs
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Political Science,
Vol.11 No.2,
April
25,
2021
ABSTRACT: The establishment of the Free Trade Area (FTA) covering the whole of
Africa is intended to combine the existing Free Trade Areas (FTAs) within the
Regional Economic Communities (RECs), to attain maximum gains from trade and
bolster AU’s growth and development objectives. But several regional blocs,
including the Tripartite Free Trade Areas (T-FTA), have all missed their
deadlines set to achieve the objectives of the Abuja Treaty of 1991 in six
stages. This means that the launch of the CFTA has become a parallel process
with immediate effect since all FTAs and T-FTA are to collapse into the Af- CFTA when
trading commences. The question therefore is, why hasn’t the AU waited until it
can harmonize, that is, combine existing arrangements of trade and the movement
of persons, under its “building blocs” concept for continental unity? In
launching the AfCFTA by the AU, does such a “hasty act,” tantamount to the
removal of layers of complexity in Africa’s existing arrangements? The
prevailing continental state system in Africa, according to functionalists, contributes to continental
tensions and conflicts because it is institutionally inadequate. Accordingly,
it cannot deal with the basic continental problems because it has arbitrarily
divided continental society into national units based on territory, and not on the problems (or issues) to be solved. This is because any successful integration project
requires autonomous and credible central institutions that can act as motors of
acceleration. Employing theories of functionalism and neo-functionalism, this
paper is of the view that the attempt to launch the AfCFTA by the AU is an act
of rebooting the dormant Custom Unions across the respective RECs. The action
by the AU is to arrest their failures, hence “grabbing the bull by the horns,” so as to empower and also embolden RECs to own the regional
integration processes and to build resilience against global shocks.