The overall objective of the course is to update and enhance the knowledge, skills, and capacity of participants with regard to the design and management of policies and programmes for deepening and accelerating regional cooperation and integration in Africa. More specifically, the course aims to promote a more efficient and results-oriented governance of the processes and institutions of African regional cooperation and integration as a key element of the continent’s development. Within the ambit of these objectives, participants will be taken through a comparative review of the paths of integration which African countries are pursuing, the experiences that have been registered to the date with the integration effort, the challenges that stand out or persist, and the alternative ways in which the outstanding or emerging challenges may be redressed.

Participants will be also exposed to the key conceptual and empirical issues that are recurrent in African regionalism, including the optimal strategic paths for using regional integration as a core tool for transforming the economies of African countries and steering them to the path of sustained and sustainable growth and development. Regional cooperation and integration experiences from other regions of the world would also be reviewed.