Regional Integration i Afrika - En analys av COMESA:s handelseffekter

This study examines regional integration in Africa with a focus on the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, COMESA. COMESA, with roots that go back to the beginning of the 1980’s, is one of the largest and most diverse areas for regional integration in Africa and has currently 19 member countries. The goal of the COMESA co-operation is to become a fully integrated area by the year 2025 that will merge into the African Union (AU). AU will then, in turn, create a fully integrated African continent in a not too far away future. The integration within COMESA is scheduled to deepen progressively and is hoped to contribute to internationally competitive goods, higher growth and lower poverty. So far, a free trade area has been created and this study uses Vinerian analysis to examine the trade effects of this liberalization process. Despite previous critique against South-South integration, because of higher risk of trade diversion, COMESA proves to have positive trade effects. No signs of trade diversion were found. Instead, trade creation was found both in terms of exports and imports, intra-COMESA as well as extra-COMESA. A majority of member countries have substantially increased their trade with other members, and non-members, since the free trade agreement entered into force in the year of 2000. There is neither one good that has driven this positive development. That is to say, the COMESA trade creation is found to be relatively evenly distributed between countries and commodities. However, the trade creation could have been larger if COMESA had provided better conditions for successful integration like more similar countries, diverging comparative advantages, better infrastructure or a higher degree of implementation