Keen to stimulate further regional integration on the continent, the African Development Bank (AfDB), the African Union Commission (AUC) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) have teamed up to produce, for the first time ever, an Africa Regional Integration Index.

The Index is the first systematic, quantitative and continent-wide monitoring system for regional integration in Africa, and is designed to track the progress of African countries and regional economic communities (RECs) towards achieving their shared regional integration goals. It will also track and document the impacts of regional integration in Africa, thus visibly presenting the case for further integration.

According to a press release from the AfDB, an Index of this kind will help countries and RECs to identify gaps and make informed policy decisions on how best to bridge those gaps and arrive at their regional integration aspirations and commitments.

Given the novelty of the project and the fact that most of the indicators that are to be used have never been compiled in this manner before, AfDB, AUC and ECA will organize a series of training sessions for national statistical focal points. For starters, statistical focal points will be trained from the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the East African Community (EAC) and Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries.

Already, a pilot training workshop was held in the last week of November at the AUC Headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, bringing together statistical focal points from Mauritius, São Tomé and Príncipe, Comoros, Madagascar, Djibouti, Burundi and Cape Verde. The next training workshop is scheduled for February 2015 in South Africa and will bring together more than 20 focal points from different RECs and Corridor Agencies.

The first edition of the Index is to be presented at the Joint AU Conference of Ministers of Economy and Finance and ECA Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development in March 2015. Before then, however, the three institutions will also present their ongoing work at the margins of the first joint Africa Directors-General of Statistics meeting in Tunis from December 8-12, 2014, as well as at the African Union (AU) Summit in January 2015.

A novel move of this kind is expected to provide a huge push and drive for regional integration in Africa by extolling the progress made in regions like the EAC and creating an incentive for other regions to dedicate the necessary resources to facilitate their own objectives. The output will provide African countries with a set of indices and empirical data points to benchmark against in the quest for further integration.

By Emmanuel Iruobe

Elsewhere on Ventures

Triangle arrow