Why Africa’s Integration is Stuck in the Spaghetti Bowl?
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Why Africa’s Integration is Stuck in the Spaghetti Bowl?
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By Tito Mbathi
May 2025
Intra-continental trade as a pathway to economic growth and development is an idea that has long been echoed by African economic leaders. Regional Economic Communities (RECs) surface as the primary vehicle for this integration, promising to dismantle colonial-era trade barriers and create larger markets. The potential benefits are substantial, including expanded market access, economies of scale, increased investment, and enhanced competitiveness. Yet, despite the proliferation of these regional frameworks, intra-African trade remains stubbornly low, accounting for merely 13.8% of the continent's total trade volume. One of the key drivers of this underperformance stems not from a lack of integration mechanisms, but paradoxically, from their abundance. The continent now hosts eight officially recognized RECs, with many countries holding simultaneous membership in multiple communities. On average African countries are a member of eight regional organizations (including the RECs), which often have conflicting priorities.
This overlapping membership has created what trade economists call the “spaghetti bowl effect”. The spaghetti bowl effect arises when a nation participates in numerous overlapping free trade agreements, potentially leading to trade diversion that negatively impacts the involved countries' trade flows. This proliferation of trade agreements can generate more trade disputes than advantages. Consequently, the intricate nature of these agreements, instead of promoting trade, has unintentionally strengthened protectionism and regulatory fragmentation throughout the continent.
Source: UNECA
When Greater Integration Means Less Trade
The complexity of multiple, overlapping RECs creates significant policy challenges for member states. Countries face conflicting obligations regarding tariff schedules, rules of origin, and regulatory standards, making full compliance with all commitments nearly impossible. For resource-constrained governments, navigating this labyrinth of requirements demands extensive administrative capacity that many simply do not possess. Consequently, protectionism often becomes the default policy position, not necessarily from economic nationalism, but as a practical response to regulatory overload. Maintaining higher barriers proves administratively simpler than implementing the nuanced, differentiated treatment required by multiple trade agreements.
The ineffectiveness in RECs is exacerbated by the financing structures of many of these communities. Most RECs rely heavily on external funding from international donors rather than member contributions, creating misalignment between institutional priorities and national interests. As these organizations respond to donor requirements and external agendas, their activities often diverge from the immediate economic needs of their member states. This dependency undermines both ownership and implementation, as governments view these externally-driven initiatives with skepticism rather than as instruments of their own economic strategy.
The Erosion of Regional Credibility
The proliferation of overlapping communities has also diluted their institutional consequence. Countries routinely neglect their regional obligations with minimal repercussions, creating a pattern of selective implementation that undermines the credibility of the entire integration project. Tanzania's recent imposition of protectionist tariffs on Kenyan goods exemplifies this problem. Despite both countries' membership in the East African Community (EAC) Customs Union, Tanzania unilaterally implemented new levies on Kenyan eggs, dairy, confectionery, and other products in March 2025, directly contravening EAC protocols on free movement of goods. Despite clear violations of regional commitments, enforcement mechanisms have thus proven to be ineffective.
Even in Southern Africa, where integration has progressed further, selective implementation undermines regional frameworks. In 2022, Botswana and Namibia banned some agricultural imports from South Africa to protect domestic producers, despite clear contravention of Southern African Customs Union (SACU) agreements. That South Africa, as the regional hegemon, chose not to retaliate highlights the political rather than rules-based nature of regional trade governance. South Africa's restraint reflects its strategic calculation that maintaining regional stability and political goodwill outweighs the economic benefits of retaliatory measures. This asymmetric power dynamic allows South Africa to absorb economic costs that smaller economies cannot, further demonstrating how regional integration remains contingent on political considerations rather than enforceable legal frameworks or market incentives.
When regional bodies do attempt enforcement, the consequences can be severe and counterproductive. ECOWAS sanctions against Niger following the 2023 military coup demonstrate this dilemma. The comprehensive sanctions package (including border closures, suspension of commercial and financial transactions, asset freezes, and travel bans) had devastating humanitarian consequences. Niger, a landlocked country dependent on imports, experienced widespread electricity blackouts, food shortages with price increases averaging 75%, critical medicine shortages, and eventually defaulted on external debt by missing payments over $500 million in external debt. These sanctions not only failed to restore constitutional order but contributed to Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso announcing their withdrawal from ECOWAS, massively fragmenting regional integration.
The Persistent Challenge of Non-Tariff Barriers
Non-tariff barriers (NTBs) represent another persistent challenge to meaningful integration. NTBs generally restrict importation and exportation of goods more severely than customs duties and other formal charges in Africa. While traditional tariff barriers have received significant policy attention, NTBs often operate in more complex and opaque ways, through laborious customs procedures, redundant documentation requirements, inconsistent application of rules of origin, and arbitrary product standards that differ across borders.
The ad valorem equivalent of these NTBs is estimated to be approximately 18% for intra-African trade, substantially higher than the continent's average tariff rate of 6%. Furthermore, NTBs raise trade costs disproportionately for small traders, who lack the institutional resources to navigate complex regulatory environments. This contributes to the persistence of informal cross-border trade, which by some estimates may account for 30-40% of intra-African trade but exists outside formal economic frameworks. The proliferation of RECs means that each community’s own standards, certifications, and procedural requirements create a byzantine maze for traders to navigate.
Beyond Rhetoric to Institutional Reform
The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) now aims to resolve these contradictions by creating a unified framework. However, the persistent challenges at regional levels suggest continental integration faces formidable obstacles. The spaghetti bowl of RECs, with their overlapping memberships, external dependencies, and selective implementation, has created structural impediments that cannot simply be legislated away. Until African nations demonstrate consistent commitment to implementing existing regional obligations and streamlining the institutional landscape, the promise of continental integration will remain unrealized. The path forward requires not more ambitious agreements, but effective implementation of existing ones.
Tito Mbathi is an Associate at Botho Emerging Markets Group