African Regional Trade Agreements as Flexible Legal Regimes

I. Introduction Trade integration in Africa is often viewed in light of the European Union and other regional integration arrangements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). From this perspective, integration is regarded as necessarily destined to proceed on a linear path where tariffs and non-tariff barriers are progressively eliminated, the trade regimes of member countries are linked together, and eventually their fiscal and monetary policies are harmonized. In the European experience, trade integration has been the result of a series of treaty commitments that also created a supranational organization to which the states transferred certain types of authority. Seen in this light, African Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) contrast sharply with their counterparts in Europe and North America, where there is a much higher commitment to compliance with the legal obligations contained in the treaties establishing them. From this view, African RTAs have not resolved the "problems of coordination, collaboration or domestic politics" that