Regional Integration and Development in Africa: Rethinking Borders and Informality

Abstract

Regional integration has been identified as one of the ways in which African countries can achieve economic development. It becomes necessary due to the nature and character of the state in Africa, where many countries are landlocked, deficient in size and limited in their capacity to drive structural transformation. While several factors have worked against the success of regional integration on the continent, a pertinent issue is the extent to which adherence to borders between and among African states continues to limit the free flow of production on the continent. Whereas many of these borders were artificially and arbitrarily drawn up by the victorious colonialists
post-World War I, post-independent African leaders have maintained them as sacrosanct lines. Notwithstanding the official restrictions, informal cross-border trade has continued in various forms, to the extent that today economic activities across the borders constitute significant sources of employment and livelihood for many Africans. Using both theoretical and empirical lenses, this paper argues that informal cross-border trade can foster regional integration in ways that are not captured by the dominant theories of integration. It concludes that, given the limited success of state-directed formal integration approaches, a non-conventional approach to integration (which involves non-state actors such as the private sector, informal cross-border traders and civil society organisations), should be explored for higher levels of integration in Africa.