The Curious Case of African Customs Unions That Do Not Unite: COMESA vs ECCAS–CEMAC

This title can be read as evoking a temporal disjuncture, recalling the narrative of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. In the film, the protagonist’s life and relationships unfold according to a reversed biological order, producing a persistent misalignment between internal development and the external environment. The logic of African regional integration processes is fundamentally similar: they often evolve through non-linear patterns, i.e. out of sync with the formal timelines and sequencing envisaged in their founding treaties. Notably, customs unions may formally adopt Common External Tariffs (CETs) and unified customs codes, yet struggle to implement them consistently and uniformly in practice. The result is a persistent gap between legal architecture and operational reality, where integration exists more in juridical form than in the on-the-ground functioning of border and trade systems.

COMESA has developed an extensive legal and institutional framework for customs cooperation, including a harmonised customs code (Customs Management Regulations, CMR) and a Common External Tariff (CET) as a uniform tariff system in trade with non-COMESA third countries. However, in practice several structural constraints limit implementation:

• member states still apply different external tariff schedules
• overlapping memberships with other regional blocs (notably SADC and the EAC) fragment tariff discipline
• national tariff sovereignty continues to dominate trade policy decisions at supranational (COMESA) level.

As a result, COMESA operates more as a partial integration arrangement than a fully functioning customs union, with elements of a free trade area (with currently not all of its member states participating to this arrangement), coexisting alongside incomplete external tariff alignment.

In Central Africa, the institutional configuration is different but produces a similar outcome. At the center of the system there are ECCAS and CEMAC, which constitute the core integration structures in the region.

In recent years, these two Regional Economic Communities (RECs) have advanced plans toward deeper institutional convergence, including steps toward a unified customs framework that should pave the way to their final merging. A decision adopted in 2024 (Décision n°5/CEEAC/CCEG/XXV/24 du 18 octobre 2024) established a unified customs code, with a Common External Tariff and harmonized rules of origin for both RECs. Despite these achievenents mark an important step toward consolidation of the two Communities, implementation remains uneven across the broader central African space. At present, only Cameroon formally adopted the ECCAS-CEMAC CET starting January 1, 2026. However, as noted by a recent paper of the Nkafu Policy Insitute, challenges in administrative capacity, training gaps, and national trade priorities in ECCAS and CEMAC member States continue to affect its practical application.

Despite their institutional differences, both COMESA and ECCAS–CEMAC reveal a common underlying pattern. Even where CETs and customs codes exist as formal legal instruments, their implementation is constrained by:

• overlapping regional memberships and competing obligations
• limited supranational enforcement capacity
• divergent national tariff and revenue interests
• fragmented and uneven customs administration systems

The core issue is not institutional failure per se, but a structural mismatch between supranational ambition and the operational capacity of participating States to deliver implementation on the ground.

African regional blocs often adopt advanced customs union instruments at the legal level before the administrative systems, enforcement mechanisms, and political alignment required for full implementation are in place. This produces a distinctive pattern of integration:

• high legal sophistication (well-developed legal frameworks on paper)
• deficient enforcement architecture (regional courts or implementation oversight bodies exist, but their enforcement powers remain highly constrained, limiting the timely and uniform application of agreed rules)
• low operational uniformity at borders (customs practices remains fragmented, not only at regional, but sometimes also at national level).

The experiences of COMESA and ECCAS–CEMAC suggest that African customs unions should not be assessed primarily on the existence of treaties, customs codes, or Common External Tariffs. Rather, they should be evaluated against a more demanding criterion: whether they function as unified systems at the border. In practice, many African customs unions remain hybrid and incomplete arrangements (as explained in this paper): legally advanced in form, but operationally fragmented in substance. In this sense, integration in Africa is often stronger in design than in execution.

The key implication is clear. The future of African trade integration will depend less on the continuous production of new legal frameworks, and more on closing the gap between institutional design and implementation capacity at the level of customs administrations as well as of border and corridor governance systems. From this perspective, integration is not achieved through legal accumulation alone, but through the progressive coordination of functions across institutions and sectors within the regional economic space. Only when this gap is closed will customs unions move from formal legal constructs to fully functioning economic systems.