The debate on African integration needs to be reframed. For too long, the continent’s integration process has been judged against the Balassian model of economic integration, which conceives regional integration as a linear process evolving from free trade areas to customs unions, common markets, monetary unions and, ultimately, economic and political union. Despite its elegance, this sequence emerged from a political, economic and social context fundamentally different from that of post-colonial Africa. The conditions that made the model work in post-war Western Europe cannot simply be transplanted onto a continent of 55 states, uneven institutional capacities, fragmented infrastructure, vast geographical distances and highly diverse legal, economic and policy environments. Yet as Africa has encountered delays in progressing along this prescribed path, the simplistic conclusion has too often been that African regional integration is failing. In a recent paper published by the Horn Economic and Social Policy Institute (HESPI), we ask a more fundamental question: what if the problem is not that Africa has failed to climb the integration ladder, but that we have mistaken the ladder for the destination? Read the entire article on the Eurasia Review here.

This paper seeks to challenge the conventional wisdom on African regional integration. It questions the assumption that Africa’s integration can be achieved through a single, continent-wide model driven from the top, and argues instead that the continent needs a more pragmatic and differentiated approach: one based on the distinct realities, capabilities, and levels of integration already emerging across its regions. The central argument is that African integration can advance by building on the continent’s existing regional dynamics, strengthening cross-border connectivity, pursuing practical cooperation around shared priorities and projects, and creating pathways for integration that can gradually scale and reinforce one another. This paper tries to contribute to a debate that increasingly needs to shift its focus from the question of whether Africa should integrate to the more practical question of what forms of integration can actually work for Africa.