Conversation Between
Dr Jacob KOTCHO
Director of the ECCAS Common Market
&
Dr Jean Cedric Kouam
Director of Economic Affairs, Nkafu Policy Institute
Dr Jacob Kotcho, you are the Director of the ECCAS Common Market. What does the concept of a common market refer to in this context? Should we understand it as the market that would result from the amalgamation of the 3 existing regional economic communities in Central Africa, namely CEMAC, ECCAS, and the Economic Community of the Great Lakes Countries (ECGLC)?
First of all, I would like to point out that the ideas I am putting forward here are not the official positions of ECCAS; they are not linked to my current position. They are research opinions. This clarification is necessary so as not to create confusion with the official stance of the institution where I work.
Before answering your question directly, it is necessary to situate the notion of a common market conceptually. In theoretical terms, it is a gradual process between States that are interested, which starts with a free trade area, and proceeds through a customs union, to eventually arrive at a common market.
The free trade area consists of gradually eliminating barriers to the free movement of goods and services. To achieve a customs union, in addition to the free trade area, a common trade policy must be put in place about third parties. The most familiar elements of the common trade policy in customs union are; the common external tariff, and harmonized customs regulations. To achieve the common market, in addition to the customs union, the Member States put in place the free movement of the factors of production, i.e. capital and labour, and the harmonization of certain elements of economic policies, for example fiscal and financial policies, competition policy, investment policies, etc.
With this conceptual reminder in mind, we can talk about the unification of the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) in Central Africa. This is a process put in place by the Conference of Heads of State and Government of the ECCAS region with the aim of harmonizing policies, projects, and programs to eventually achieve “a single regional economic community in Central Africa”. These are the terms of the decision taken by the Conference of Heads of State. The aim is to carry out a process, according to a methodology to be agreed upon, to merge the existing integration communities within the geographical area into a single community. It is not a matter, of priori talking about ECCAS as a single economic community. Several methodological issues need to be addressed in order to achieve this objective.
At the 5th meeting of the Council of Ministers of the Steering Committee for the Harmonization of Regional Economic Communities in Central Africa (Comité de Pilotage de la Rationalisation des Communautés Économiques Régionales en Afrique Centrale – COPIL/CER-AC) held in Yaoundé on 9 August 2022, the ministers of the sub-region decided to reintroduce the ECGLC into the Committee’s decision-making bodies. Do you think that the ECGLC’s withdrawal at some point explains the delays we are experiencing today in the launch of the new single community, which was scheduled for December 2023?
In my view, this is not the main reason for the delay. Let’s look back at the main stages of this process. It was launched in 2007 in Kinshasa and in 2009, the Conference of Heads of State decided to appoint the President of the Republic of Cameroon, His Excellency President Paul Biya, as the President dedicated to unification. This function is a facilitation mechanism put in place by the Conference of Heads of State to enable close monitoring. In 2015, a decision was taken to set up the Technical Secretariat for the unification process. Between 2009 and 2015, very little was done for various reasons. From 2015 onwards, things accelerated a little with the various meetings of the unification Steering Committee.
Several problems have emerged, notably insufficient financial and human resources, but above all differences of opinion on the direction to take with regard to the unification methodology, and this is the core of the issue. How do we go about eventually creating a single economic community in Central Africa?
There have been different approaches to this. Some have envisaged it as meaning that all the regional economic communities would be merged into a single one through the creation of a new regional economic community, and they have their arguments. Others thought it would be better, given that all the states involved in this process are ECCAS member states, to find ways of integrating the other regional economic communities into ECCAS, insofar as they are subsets of ECCAS … and they have their arguments for that.
ECCAS is one of the eight regional economic communities in Africa recognized by the African Union. What is the African Union’s position on the unification of the existing regional economic communities in Central Africa? Shouldn’t ECCAS be considered the only community, given that it is the only one recognized by the African Union? If not, has the African Union already taken steps to approve the new single community resulting from the merger of the REC-CA?
The African Union does not have a position on the method or approach to unification within the regional economic communities. What the African Union has done to set the framework for unification is to take a decision that recognizes the regional economic communities, which are designated as the pillars of the integration process in Africa.
Given the above, there is already a problem at the level of the African Union. We note that the geographical division establishes five geographical areas, but the designated pillar economic communities are eight in number. COMESA, SADC and IGAD are recognized as the pillars of African integration, and this poses a problem, because all these organizations operate in the same area and have virtually the same member states.
You asked if it would not be better for Central Africa to unify around ECCAS, which is the pillar organization, in what is known as “merger by insertion”. There are several arguments in favor of this approach. The first argument is that all the Member States in the Central African geographical area are members of ECCAS and the other organizations are entirely subsets of ECCAS. The second is that the ECCAS Conference of Heads of State decided not long ago to launch a process of profound institutional reform of ECCAS, which led to the revision of the treaty to modernize it, with a view to incorporating all the fields covered by all the organizations within the sub-region. The third argument is the one you mentioned, namely that this organization is already the only one recognize at the continental level as the pillar of integration for Central Africa. There are other, more operational arguments, such as the opportunity cost of dissolving all the existing organizations, the financial cost of unification in this format, the social cost that this represents, and so on.
On the other hand, there are also a number of arguments put forward by the supporters of the merger-constitution approach. The first argument is that all the regional integration organizations currently in operation in Central Africa are in poor conditions because of the serious shortcomings in their results. The advocates of merger-constitution believe that unification is an opportunity to dissolve all these organizations, which have shown significant limitations over the decades of their existence, and to establish a new organization that would have more scope to develop with new values, new perspectives and greater performance.
To analyse the unification process, we can also look at what is happening elsewhere. In West Africa, for example, a similar process is underway. And the configuration of integration in West Africa is virtually identical, with a few exceptions, to what is happening in Central Africa. In West Africa, the approach that has been chosen is to merge WAEMU into ECOWAS. This was incorporated into the revision of the ECOWAS Constitutive Treaty.
These are the answers I can give to your question, which I recognize may be open to debate, but it’s an open question.
What justifies the financial constraints in the process of unification the RECs in Central Africa? Why are some states not up to date with their financial contributions? Is it legitimate to attribute this to a simple lack of political will?
This challenge is difficult to explain from the perspective you present. Because, like the process of unification , the operation of the regional economic communities is facing major financial difficulties. States do not always honour their commitments. So if they behave in the same way in the unification process, this does not mean that they are not interested in the unification process.
I’m not sure I have the right explanation for the behaviour of Central African states in relation to the regional integration process in general. There are many actions for which there is no objective explanation. But what we must note is that there are difficulties in mobilizing financial resources for the process, and this is a reason for the delays in progress.
How involved do you think the people are in the process of unifying the RECs in Central Africa?
I like this question, which raises the general issue of the involvement of the people in the decision-making processes within regional integration. But it also raises a methodological question. What does it mean to involve the people in a unification process that has political decision-making bodies at the highest level? Involving the people doesn’t mean going to the neighbourhood and asking a ” retailer” to come and tell you how to unify. I didn’t say that’s what you meant. No !
In the political decision-making process, some procedures are defined in the texts governing the processes in question. Within organizations, various bodies and institutions have been set up, including those made up of representatives of the people. Within both ECCAS and CEMAC, there is a community parliament, a community court of justice and a community court of audit, all of which are responsible for overseeing the conduct of those entrusted with executive functions. This set of institutions creates the conditions for people with a mandate from the people to be involved in the decision-making processes and in monitoring the implementation and control of the integration process. We could also envisage consulting the people in referendums to take decisions… but I don’t think we can do that in the context of unification.
If we look at direct social interaction, people do not need to wait for unification to interact. If we look at Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon, we find identical communities living together in border areas, even though there are borders. You will find Fangs in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. These people continue to maintain relations, have family ties and visit each other, even if the administrative borders create political and social tensions at times. If you look at Gabon and Congo, you will find similar patterns. The same applies to East Cameroon and the Central African Republic, North Cameroon and Chad, and the DRC and Angola, etc.
Do you think that the African continental free trade area will give a boost to the unification process in Central Africa?
Absolutely, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) can be a driving force for unification, at least in the creation of a free trade area within the Community. This is because all the ECCAS member states have signed and ratified the treaty establishing the AfCFTA. Secondly, there is a set of instruments that have been adopted at continental level and that exist at regional level, but which have not yet been fully harmonized. So if all the ECCAS member states rigorously apply the AfCFTA, there will eventually be a problem of overlapping rules.
At some point, a choice will have to be made. And I think that the choice will certainly be in favour of applying the AfCFTA instruments to the detriment of the multiplicity of instruments that exist within the Community.
Do you share the view that “the slowness of the unification process” is due to the failure of the free movement of people and goods, with some Central African countries preferring to close in on themselves and others to remain hostile to others?
I’m not sure that there is a direct link, because whatever people say, within the six CEMAC member states, the free movement of people is operational and effective, at least as far as visa exemption, the right of temporary residence for 90 days and the existence of a community passport are concerned. So establishing this correlation doesn’t seem very appropriate to me.
Does the fact that the steering committee for the harmonization of the Central African regional economic communities is made up of a council of ministers from the member countries confirm that all the countries agree with this approach of merging and dissolving the existing RECs?
I don’t know whether the author of this question is jumping to conclusions. I do know that work is being done to prepare the legal instruments for a new economic community by dissolving the existing communities. But I also know that there is not yet a total consensus on merger-constitution. Indeed, at the last ECCAS summit held in July 2023, the Council of Ministers called for a workshop to be organized on unification in order to determine the course of action to be taken. I’ll stop here!
The final communique of the 5th meeting of the Council of Ministers of the Steering Committee for the Harmonization of Regional Economic Communities in Central Africa (COPIL/CER-AC), held in Yaounde on 9 August 2022, states that the Constitutive Treaty has been approved. What does this mean now?
I’m not sure that the final communique from that meeting explicitly states that the treaty establishing the new community has been approved. The communique says, unless I’m mistaken, that the draft treaty is currently being assessed by the Heads of State … those are the terms of the final communique. I don’t know if I’ve read it wrong, but you can check it …
Why did the Economic Community of the Great Lakes Countries (ECGLC) withdraw at one point from the process of unifying the RECs in Central Africa? How was this decision taken?
The argument put forward by the ECGL member countries to request that this economic community be temporarily excluded was that, its constitutional bodies had not met for a very long time. So the decision to involve the ECGLC in unification in Central Africa had not been formally taken by the highest political authorities.
Given the great similarity between the economies of Central Africa, what exactly are we going to exchange, whether with the AfCFTA or unification ?
There is an illusion effect linked to the similar factor endowments within the Central African states. Who says that because plantain is produced in Cameroon, it cannot be produced in Gabon and sold in both Cameroon and Gabon? Because Cameroon has an iron deposit and Gabon also has an iron deposit, can’t we set up smelters and steelworks and produce steel to sell in Cameroon, Nigeria and anywhere else in the world?
The construction of regional value chains will be based on complementarity and even similarity. We need to establish a relationship between factor endowments, processing capacities and target markets. So from my point of view, the similarity of factor endowments and production structures is not an obstacle to industrialization, nor to the construction of a common market that is a determinant of economic growth and the structural transformation of economies.
What are the concrete and urgent actions that need to be taken by States to achieve the unification of Central Africa’s regional economic communities in the very near future? What are the key factors that need to be taken into account?
What needs to be said objectively is that it is essential for the authorities at political level to give definitive direction to the methodological approach to unification. It is also necessary for all stakeholders to give their full support to the process. Finally, it is extremely urgent for the technical secretariat to unify its field of intervention, and for its missions to be concentrated on the essentials so that the scarce resources available can be used effectively to produce the expected results.
