Addis Ababa, 1 June 2020 (ECA) – The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) has launched a new website dedicated to the African Regional Integration Index following the recent launch of ARII 2019 which calls on the continent to build more resilient economies through integration.
The website will give readers a deeper understanding of the performance of the continent, Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and African countries in regional integration and assist African nations in making the most of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and boosting intra-African trade (BIAT) action plan.
The Index evaluates regional integration on the basis of five dimensions – trade integration, productive integration, macroeconomic integration, infrastructural integration, and integration in terms of free movement of people – for the 54 African countries and for the eight RECs recognised by the African Union. ARII 2019 ranks African countries’ level of integration within their respective RECs and also with the rest of the continent.
The objective of the website is to enable an in-depth understanding of integration across its various dimensions as presented in ARII 2019. The website has features that allow access to customized maps, graphs, tables and the underlying raw data.
Africa’s overall score in regional integration from ARII 2019 is relatively low, suggesting considerable room for improvement. The relative poor performance is due to low scores in two specific areas: productive integration and infrastructural integration. Low trade in intermediate products explains the relatively weak performance in productive integration, while inadequate infrastructure networks drive poor performance in infrastructural integration.
The five dimensions of integration in ARII 2019 are closely interrelated that Africa’s overall performance in regional integration would improve significantly and allow African countries to make the most out of the AfCFTA if regional value chains are strengthened, thereby improving the continent’s productive integration and enhancing the infrastructure network.
The ECA has provided training to Member States on the collection and use of the information in ARII 2019 for policy analysis and policy development.
The website can be accessed here. For any additional information or feedback on ARII 2019 and/or the website, please send an email to eca-atpc@un.org.
Issued by:
Communications Section
Economic Commission for Africa
PO Box 3001
Addis Ababa
Ethiopia
Tel: +251 11 551 5826
E-mail: eca-info@un.org