COMAI, or African Integration's best-kept secret?

The Accidental Ecowas & AU Citizen”:
By E.K.Bensah Jr
If it is true that the AUC/AfDB/UNECA have been frontline intergovernmental actors facilitating regional integration, then one can also speculate that COMAI plays a secondary but important ancillary role to African integration.

When you look at these actors in isolation, you might get lost in translating the understanding of what African integration really is about. COMAI, for example, has been operating at the intergovernmental level in a context of REC-rationalization since 2006, when it was institutionalized.

The eight AU-mandated RECs have been operating as legal personalities in their own right as well, creating action plans and attempting to implement REC-specific plans. As to whether they have cognizant of how their plans sit with the African Economic Community(AEC) is less clear. In fact, we can speculate that it is virtually non-existent as a debate needs to be had on the relationship between the AEC and the RECs.

Last week, Mauritius played host to the Sixth conference of African Ministers on Integration—very much against the blind-side of most African countries. In Ghana, many minds were naturally focussed on the televised electoral petition hearing. Elsewhere in other countries, the domestic was very much standard fare, which is understandable. However, given that the continent is but a month away from the celebration of 50 years of efforts at African integration, one would have thought reporting on this specific issue might get a look-in by more African media.

Truth of the matter is that since the institutionalisation of the Conference of African Ministers in Charge of Integration (COMAI) in 2006, five (5) Conferences have been held to date. The First and Second Conferences were held in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso from March 30-31, 2006, and Kigali, Rwanda, from July 26-27, 2007. The Third and Fourth Conferences took place in Abidjan, Cote d‟Ivoire, from May 19-23, 2008, and Yaoundé, Cameroon, from May 4-8, 2009, respectively. The Fifth Conference was held on 5-9 September, 2011, in Nairobi, Kenya. According to the AU, the theme of each Conference has ranged from sovereignty and integration, partnerships and integration and how to successfully integrate Africa.

Unbeknownst to the average follower of African integration, one of the major outcomes of all COMAI have been recommendations from Ministers to key integration players. It is within this context that the Commission annually prepares a Report, titled 'the Follow-Up Report on the Implementation of Recommendations from COMAI'. These Reports track the progress of key integration players in their attempts to implement the COMAI recommendations. The Report does this by highlighting key outputs/achievements, challenges, best practices and putting forward recommendation to strengthen, accelerate and deepen momentum towards the integration process and the achievement of tangible integration results. The latest Report, which draft came out the same time as COMAI VI was ongoing, is the fourth in the series. It seeks to assess how some of the following recommendations have been implemented over the past year since COMAI V in 2011.

According to the AU, the recommendations are in areas such as social affairs; pooling sovereignty; policy harmonisation and coordination; reporting on regional integration; transpositioning and implementation of decisions; development of multi-sector programmes; formation of a 2nd bloc of combined RECs; implementation of the Minimum Integration Programme(MIP); partnership development and development and graduation of Least Developed Countries (LDC). True to custom, matrices have been sent to Member States(MS), RECs and UNECA in order to provide an update on implementation.

As far as responses go, very few were received from Member States. Of the 54 Member States that comprise the Union eight (8) responded to the matrix, namely: Ethiopia, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mauritius, Cameroon, Congo and Nigeria. While only five (5) RECs (62.5 per cent) provided official responses to the matrix (COMESA, EAC, IGAD, ECCAS and ECOWAS). To complement the information received from various stakeholders involved, secondary data was also used, which, according to the AU, derives from institutional documentation, such as the REC annual reports – as well as other relevant documentation. Face to face interviews were also conducted during missions to the RECs. This is the basis of the information in this report, which contents will form the second part of this piece.

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