Whenever I am involved in the negotiations for regional trade integration, I often observe the gap presented by the lack of efficient supranational institutions to coordinate and implement regional affairs. While I appreciate the need for regional integration in Africa and the importance of achieving the Africa Union as enshrined in the Abuja Treaty, I think African countries are not going about in the most appropriate way.
In most of the economic blocs in Africa, the visible and operational supranational institutions are their Secretariats. This is noticeable with economic blocs such as EAC, COMESA, SADC, ECOWAS and IGAD, among others. Although Secretariats are important in the integration process, their main purpose is to effectively coordinate their respective blocs in the integration process. The members of the African regional trade integration bloc make various decisions which require follow up and coordination. For this reason a Secretariat is required to prepare and coordinate meetings, follow-up and track progress on implementation of the decisions and update the responsible parties. The Secretariats make it possible to put together information on the various programs of the trade integration bloc for the member states to review the progress. But this is how far a Secretariat goes. In the context of the Regional Trade Integration in Africa, Secretariats have no powers to enforce implementation and reprimand failures. The situation is worsened by the fact that the existing trade integration blocs in Africa have made little efforts to create supranational institutional to enforce implementation of the decisions.
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