Southern Africa Regional Plan
4. Rationale for regional working
4.1 Beyond national boundaries
As a geographical area where national boundaries have only been fixed relatively recently, Southern Africa has historically experienced a great deal of natural movement of people between what are now separate countries. Traditional agricultural and trade flow routes do not recognise national borders, and this has been a source of tension as formal management of [...]
4.2 Markets, resources and cooperation
The populations of most African countries are too small to constitute significant markets or to attract external investment. Regional economic integration is essential to create larger markets. African countries do very little trade with one another, to the detriment of their economies. Numerous regulatory regimes, border controls and tariffs constitute significant barriers which need to [...]
4.3 Different ways of working
Just as there are many issues which can potentially benefit from a regional approach, there is also a spectrum of possible approaches to regional working. These range from ‘soft’ integration based on consensus in a framework of intergovernmental arrangements; through to ‘hard’ integration where member states give up a certain amount of national sovereignty to [...]
4.4 Questions: tackling the right issues
What criteria should inform decisions on which issues to tackle through a regional programme? And what criteria should determine how those issues are approached?
