Can African Countries Reap Benefit From Their Economic Integration Case Study

3.4.2 Can African Countries Reap Benefits from their Economic Integration?

According to the Commission for Africa (2005), even today most African countries rely on a very narrow range of exports and their colonial legacy, therefore Africa is not able to breakinto new markets. When comparing Africa and Asia, one observes that there is a hugedifference, even though they are both classified as developing continents. This is mainlybecause in the last twenty years, Asia developed an industrial infrastructure, skills and alearning culture, which Africa still lacks. One of the key failures of Africa in the 1970s wasto not move away from primary commodities’ reliance and start with diversification ofAfrican economies straight away. As a result, the task of breaking into new markets is now harder than ever before for Africa.
A lack of trade between
These include bureaucracy, cumbersome customs procedures,and corruption by civil servants. As it is now, the journey from Lagos to Abidjan involvesofficial and unofficial checkpoints every 14 km. In Ivory Coast, getting a single lorry fromone side of the country to the other adds $400 to the journey in official payments andbribery (Commission for Africa Report 2005), and this might be because of conflicts in thiscountry. This clearly indicates that Africa’s customs desperately need reform, as it suffersfrom the highest average customs delays in the world. As an example, Lithuania requiresone day for customs clearance and Ethiopia averages 30 days for complex customsprocedures. According to this report, changes in governance are needed in order tostrengthen the investment climate in Africa, because transparency can help to combat thecorruption which African governments need to root out. However, the pertinent questionis: “Is this enough to ensure successful integration?” Obviously, there are other reformsthat are needed, but without progress in governance, all other reforms will have limited