SHIPPING A car from Japan to the Ivory Coast costs about US$1,500, while shipping the same vehicle from Ethiopia across the continent to the Ivory Coast costs US$5,000. This is just one fact of the harsh reality facing African economic integration. Road, rail and air networks, such as they are, are poorly connected among countries and transport costs are prohibitive.
We in the Caribbean, struggling over three decades to make CARICOM work and with our deep historical ties to the African continent, can readily identify with the problems confronting African Unity. Two years ago, this month, with much fanfare, the African Union was launched in Durban, South Africa to replace the old Organisation of African Unity running back to the early 1960s. The AU was modelled on the European Union and was designed to promote peace, security and development for the 53 countries of the continent. Much like our own West Indian Commission which addressed regional integration and development in the early 1990s and produced its Time for Action Report in 1992, an Economic Commission for Africa has just released a 275-page study, Assessing Regional Integration in Africa.
At the opening ceremony of the AU, South African President, Thabo Mbeki, the first chairman of the AU, called the new organisation a chance for Africa to take its "rightful place" in global affairs. "The time has come," he said, "that we must end the marginalisation of Africa." While here last June, he articulated in several of his speeches, the same vision for the future of the continent. Africa is rich in resources, but, as things stand, inter-continental trade among members of the AU accounts for only about 10 per cent of total trade. This can be contrasted with the volume of trade between the United States and Canada as neighbours and major trading partners and trade within the European Union. Africa, like CARICOM, exports mainly primary products and is facing with all other ACP countries the impending crisis of the removal of preferential quotas by the European Union under WTO rules.
On the same day that the integration report of the Economic Commission for Africa was released, the European Commission endorsed a proposal for the overhaul of the EU's sugar policy involving huge price cuts of up to 40 per cent. At the time of the launch of the African Union, the Group of 8 developed countries had promised new development aid to help the Union realise its objectives. Africa is the poorest, most AIDS-ravaged continent and will need special assistance from the multi-lateral and bilateral agencies of the world to have a good go at achieving the ambitious goals of the two-year-old African Union.
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