MWE Correspondent
One of the promising venues of research related to BRICS is the application of international best practices among the leading regional arrangements and multilateral organizations in rendering the bloc’s operation more effective. One such idea that we advanced recently was the creation of a BRICS Troika along the lines of how it works in the G20 as well as in a number of other global and regional frameworks.
We now turn our focus to the approaches and practices employed by the African Union (AU) – a regional bloc that has made notable advances in recent years, becoming in 2023 a full-fledged member of the G20. We aim to explore in particular the approach of the African Union to coordinating the efforts of economic integration across a number of Africa’s Regional Economic Communities (RECs).
Indeed, in all of the Global South there is no region quite like Africa in terms of the scale of the continental integration efforts. In fact, Africa may be considered as a unique and the most significant platform for the “integration of integrations” in the world economy, with the coordination of integration efforts across multiple regional blocs and regional development institutions.
The African Union recognizes 8 RECs:
According to the official website of the African Union, “the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) are regional groupings of African states and are the pillars of the AU… The purpose of the RECs is to facilitate regional economic integration between members of the individual regions and through the wider African Economic Community (AEC), which was established under the Abuja Treaty (1991).”
For coordination, an AU-RECs-ECA-AfDB Coordination Committee was established involving:
The Expert Coordination meetings offer recommendations for these institutions on implementing Agenda 2063, flagship projects, and broader integration strategy.
In emulating Africa’s experience, BRICS could create a Secretariat to coordinate the integration blocs of its members. Possible relevant groupings include:
The BRICS+ platform, once referred to as BEAMS (a pre-expansion term), may benefit from an AU-like Coordination Committee with involvement of the New Development Bank (NDB) and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), potentially supported by United Nations development agencies.
To align regional efforts, BRICS+ could consider a Minimum Integration Programme modeled after the AU’s strategy, and also adopt tools similar to the Africa Regional Integration Index to monitor progress. The NDB may also draw lessons from AU partnerships with institutions like the World Bank in funding regional integration.
The expansion of BRICS to include Ethiopia and Egypt further strengthens BRICS-AU ties, especially given that the African Union headquarters is located in Addis Ababa.
