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White Paper: Regional Integration in Southern Africa: Lessons for South Asia 1

White Paper

The Political Economy of Regional Integration

In Southern Africa: The Research Challenges and

Lessons for South Asia


White Paper: Regional Integration in Southern Africa: Lessons for South Asia 2

Introduction

Regional integration, whereby individual nation states surrender certain

traditional aspects of sovereignty in exchange for the economic benefits of membership

in a union with other nations, has delivered varying results for those actively engaged in

such relationships.

This paper will report on the research of the considerable literature addressing the

political and economic conundrum that continues to plague two distinct geographical and

cultural areas of the world, Southern Africa and South Asia.

That disparity of benefit to individual nations within a particular organized group

under a specific regional integration agreement (RIA) is not the principal focus of this

commentary. Some individual nations derive more benefit than others under the plethora

of the world’s regional free trade agreements (FTAs), and considerable research exists

addressing this issue. The present paper, however, is focused upon an investigation into

Southern Africa’s poor performance under its RIAs and whether contemporary research

findings support parallels to similar current and projected outcomes in South Asia.

Because all global economies were affected by the world monetary crisis of 2008-

2009, this paper will primarily consider those findings of regional integration successes

or failures of these two subject regions subsequent to those events. This is not to say that

the foundational work of Haas and others will not be referenced for their historical

perspectives, as his reasons for studying the processes and outcomes of regional

integration remain as valid today as they did in 1970 when he suggested the possibility of

finding that “regional peace-keeping machinery is more effective than United Nations
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procedures” in pursuit of conflict avoidance and resolution (Haas, 608). Haas managed

to penetrate abstractions and theories, and points those researchers who followed his

work toward predictions based upon past performance. He distinguishes between easily

confused definitions of regional integration, regionalism, regional cooperation, and

regional systems in setting the stage for much of the quantitative research that ensued

over a period of forty years. Those distinctions need to be kept in mind throughout the

following, and will be herein defined below.

Haas articulated, in his 1970 work The Study of Regional Integration: Reflections

on the Joy and Anguish of Pretheorizing, a series of what he called “empirical

generalizations” which retain significance today: The perception of increased

interdependence occurs when regional groups experience increased trade among

themselves as compared to countries outside the union. Alternatively, integration is seen

as a negative force where, among other factors, there is a perceived imbalance of power

or benefit among group members. The size of individual states within the group does not

predict success as long as the core rationale for affiliation remains viable, and the

addition of other associations within the primary integrated group has no predictive value

to the overall longterm success of the union. The best predictor of overall success are the

commitments to common market exchange and shared growth, supported not just in the

language of agreements, but in the conduct and actions called for in those agreements.

Unquestionably, no national or regional economy escaped the effects of 2008’s

global financial crisis, the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Eight years

later, however, there has been a semblance of growth and stability slowly returning to

most national economies and industries. This by no means implies that things have
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returned to pre-2007 levels, but with the exception of Southern Africa and South Asia,

there has been measurable global economic progress in terms of productivity and trade.

Because of the current global economic evolution, research prior to 2008 (Haas,

Lindberg, De Lombaerde, Van Langenhove, et al), while it pointed the way for more

contemporary analysis and articulated working definitions still au currant in the lexicon

used by more contemporary researchers, will not be the fulcrum upon which any

conclusions drawn here will rest. Post-2008 research efforts will be the primary sources

for this paper.

Definition of terms.

Semantic confusion in understanding the research occurs easily, and all

contemporary researchers frequently make the effort to define their terms. As a

preliminary step prior to considerations of the literature and any subsequent discussion,

the following is offered in the interests of clarifying and simplifying what follows.

Regionalism – A cornerstone of international commercial constructs shaped by

aligned interest within a geographically delineated area.

Integration – consolidating disparate interests into a unified intentional objective

for the benefit of those interests.

Regional integration – the voluntary merging of independent sovereign

neighbors’ economic, political, and security objectives in pursuit of individual and

collective interests, confirmed by mutual agreement.

RIA – Regional integration agreement, the documented contract among sovereign

nations committing them to act in support of the protocols for increased trade,

investment, and security within the geographically circumscribed area.


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FTA – Free trade agreement, wherein sovereign nations agree to eliminate specific

tariffs or other impediments to the exchange of goods and value between themselves,

with the objective of stimulating such activity.

Trading bloc – Those sovereign signatories to an agreement eliminating in part or

in whole economic and political barriers to trade; members generally share geographic

proximity, similar levels of economic productivity, and political commitment to the

furtherance of trading activity.

Sovereignty – The right and ability of a political entity to self-govern absent

outside control or influence.

Customs union – A trading bloc within a free trade area protected by common

tariffs imposed upon those outside the bloc.

The question we need to ask has no easy answer: Why is it that Southern Africa

and South Asia, two culturally and economically diverse and geographically distant parts

of the world, are not enjoying the benefits of regional integration experienced by other

regionally integrated nation-groups? With those answers in hand, those who are today

confronting the challenges of regional integration in South Asia may benefit from an

understanding of the ongoing impediments and frustrations with which their counterparts

in Southern Africa have been dealing for several decades. If there are indeed parallels to

be drawn by way of something akin to a cautionary tale, the sharper the focus upon them

the better.

The examination of economic and political similarities of both subject regions—

despite their disparate resources, climates, and cultures—and their participation within

their integrated regional economic and trade associations is anticipated to reveal common
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impediments. Highlighting those impediments and concomitant challenges may point the

way to resolution; each region may benefit by an examination of the struggles of the

other.

Considerable research into the subject of Southern Africa’s failure to engage in

committed regional integration efforts has been ongoing for more than 40 years. The

same is true with regard to the study of regional integration phenomena in South Asia.

The challenge of critical selection of materials was overcome by narrowing the area of

research study to the period following the 2008 global financial crisis, which adversely

affected the economies of the world in general and those of both Southern Africa and

South Asia in particular. Given this self-imposed constrained timeframe of research

sourcing, earlier academic research efforts and writings nevertheless underlie any

contemporary analysis and conclusions.

The conclusions we may reach, while principally referencing the academic

research of the most recent two decades, must acknowledge those theoretical and

empirical studies from which that more contemporary research evolved. Landmark work

by Louise Fawcett in her Regionalism in World Politics: Regional Organization and

International Order (1996), Ernst Haas in his 1958 work The Challenges of Regionalism,

as well as the plentiful United Nations Department of Economics and Social Affairs

Working Papers (2005-2015) provide the underlying foundation for this research.

In assessing the currency and suitability of the documented research and

published findings in the area of specific geographical efforts at regional integration, it

has been necessary to access a number of online academic library databases to review the

research conclusions of early thought leaders in the field. Google Scholar pointed in the
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general direction of economics and international relations analytical writings; ithaka.org

provided access to both digital academic archives and to JSTOR’s cloud-based library of

academic databases, a subscription to which enabled detailed reading of multiple journal

articles, books, and treatises, many of which served as research and reading reference

points.

As indicated, pursuant to more chronologically expansive initial reading and

research, it was determined that, while there exists substantial source material reporting

studies of the challenges and outcomes of efforts at regional integration dating back to the

mid-20th Century, some referencing the formation of the United Nations as a body

responsible for international economic and political policy, the contemporary challenges

currently facing the regions of interest to this study were best addressed through a review

of more recent academic publications. Constraining this research to the period 2008-

2015, while limiting the volume and authorship of material under consideration, provided

an appreciation of the challenges of the past and present as well as a fundamental

apprehension of future potentials.

Research limitations, in terms of access, were few. Subscriptions to appropriate

international academic databases and the ability to explore the early research papers of

subject area published by academics, theoreticians, and thought leaders provided

considerable material, albeit much of it revolving around the same galaxy of conclusions

arrived at earlier. The published research, both prior to the 2008 international financial

crisis and post-2008, reveals little disagreement among scholars as to the sources of the

challenges facing successful regional integration in either South Asia or Southern Africa;

nor is there any debate regarding the persistent urgency faced by the nations of those
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regions in confronting those challenges. The preponderance of scholarship in this area

indicates the same problematic cultural, ethnic, economic, political, and security factors

impeding any progress toward regional integration; The findings of this paper, after an in-

depth consideration of prior studies, may ultimately echo the deductive reasoning reached

by the legion of researchers whose unanimous conclusions resound as a harmonic chorus.

As the preponderance of the research conducted herein referenced the work of

several preeminent established scholars in the field, and as the majority of those

researchers reference the studies of their academic peers in their writings, this paper was

written in complete confidence of both the validity of its sources’ findings and in the

originality of the research leading to those conclusions. In spite of the apparent

coherence of findings demonstrated by researchers in the field over a period of many

decades, their conclusions—unique or not—stand on their own based upon the research

conducted. Of course, the mere synchronicity of research conclusions in no way

validates those conclusions; each conclusion referenced herein was independently

determined after a review of preceding research as well as contemporary data, and then

entered into the recorded annals of academic, political, and economic thinking. All such

works are duly and appropriately referenced within the text of this paper and in the

appending Reference chapter.

Having narrowed the focus of our interest in the efficacy and potential of efforts

at regional integration to two individual and distinct sub-continents (Southern Africa and

South Asia), the nature of the research literature provided an opportunity for clear

segmentation at the outset. Once a strenuous consideration of the studies published on


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one of the two regions was focused upon, those findings were set aside while the

published research findings of the remaining region were studied.

At the point where the review of the literature pertaining to both subject regions

was sufficient to provide a general overview of individual academic research efforts,

those findings were consolidated and compared. Points of disparity, contradiction, or

contention among the various research findings were sought in reviewing the

amalgamated data and conclusions; few were found. Rather, points of commonality as to

the impediments to regional integration in both the subject regions were apparent. Where

the research pointed to discrepancies and variations or where it highlighted similarities

and parallel issues, they are noted herein and point to this paper’s thesis even more

profoundly than anticipated.

Southern Africa’s Challenges to Regional Integration

In examining the reasons why long-term efforts for regional integration among

distinct sovereign states remains a challenge for both Southern African and South Asia,

several scholarly efforts appear to have reached common ground.

As early as 1970, Haas (606-646) spoke to the point that by then he had been

studying regional integration for more than a decade, referencing the period’s “blooming

in Europe of political efforts to build a united continent and to ‘integrate’ Western Europe

at least.” In his International Organization paper The Study of Regional Integration:

Reflections on the Joy and Anguish of Pretheorizing, Haas outlined the growing

importance of regional trading blocks to the objectives of progressive international

relations and economic globalization. In referencing the contemporary research of others


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(De Lombaerde, VanLangenhove), Haas pointed to the objectives of regional integration,

several of which appear to have not been met by Southern African efforts some 40 years

later.

The German Development Institute, in a June 2000 Briefing Paper, discussed in

some specific detail the difficulties immediately arising upon the agreement by the

Southern African Development Community coalition in the face of South Africa’s then-

undefined political and social commitment to the regional organization. The paper,

authored by Regine Qualmann, pointed to “divergent economic and social development”

among the SADC members, adding that South Africa had to that point in time

demonstrated no initiative to fundamentally deal with the problems of other member

nations. Qualmann reached the conclusion that if Germany were to commit to

substantial “development cooperation” by way of investing in the development of SADC

infrastructures and economies, SADC members would need to transfer “substantial

sovereign powers” to the SADC. Based upon prior and subsequent research into the

issue of individual SADC member sovereignty and cultural expectations, such a

progressive outcome may be less than imminent.

Qualmann’s research perspective was substantially empirical, pointing to plentiful

examples of Southern Africa’s inability to coalesce for a common benefit. She managed

to avoid making a specific recommendation, but the preponderance of the evidence cited

indicates a fundamental “line in the sand” requiring significant quid pro quo if Southern

Africa is to earn the financial commitment of this leading EU member.

In the 2011 Staff Working Paper Regional Integration in Africa, written under the

auspices of the World Trade Organization Economic Research and Statistics Division,
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Hartzenberg presented a clear overview of the challenges and failures of Southern

Africa’s multi-channel efforts at regional integration. The study considered the entire

spectrum of organizations, many with overlapping jurisdictions, all of which demonstrate

“a dismally poor implementation record.” Hartzenberg discussed in some detail Southern

Africa’s proclivity for economic structures of linear market integration involving free

trade areas, customs unions, a common market, with the ultimate objective of creating a

viable economic union. The problem of creating an effective Tripartite Free Trade Area

among the member states signatory to a “proliferation of regional trade agreements

(RIA)” is presented and supported by a summary of Southern Africa’s tentacled

agreement history, one which has produced very little in the way of equitable benefits

among all signatory nations.

Hartzenberg, while avoiding any pejorative assessments of the outlook for future

success at the regional level, pointed to the obvious internal conflicts among member

states who appear to give considerable lip service to community objectives while

steadfastly pursuing their exclusive sovereign interests, frequently to the detriment of

fellow regional participants. Ultimately, however, Hartzenberg questioned the sincerity

of individual signatories to the various Southern African regional integration agreements,

and notes the difficulty of enforcing RIA terms: “Sanctions for the lack of

implementation or the application of sanctions if they do exist in Africa RIAs are notable

by their absence in most Africa RIAs.”

Hartzenberg gave only passing reference to the 40-plus year long evolution of

South African RIAs and their effectiveness, but briefly outlined the contemporary

affiliations and endeavors of the 26 member states of SADC, EAC, and COMESA who in
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2008 agreed to establish a free trade area as the Tipartite FTA. The irony, as Hartzenberg

pointed out, is that “Africa’s integration record is marked by grand schemes, weak legal

and institutional foundations…and an implementation record that does not demonstrate

serious commitment.”

A more recent analysis of the Southern African regional integration conundrum

takes a much more laudatory perspective in the Bertelsmann-Scott paper The Regional

Integration of Public Goods, published by the European Centre for Development Policy

Management in 2013. Eschewing the historical perception of limited progress among

Southern African states toward implementation of free trade territories, Bertelsmann-

Scott points to earlier successes in infrastructure progress pursuant to the efforts of the

Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC). The ECDPM paper

asserts that the principle objective of the SADCC was to encourage “independence from

South Africa” once South Africa joined the coalition of states, and that the objectives of

the new SADC continue to evolve toward complete regional economic and trade

integration.

Bertelsmann-Scott admits to stunted progress toward trade integration since the

inception of SADC, but remarkably gives a nod of approval to “other areas of

integration,” which deserve recognition.

In a series of Case Studies presented at the center of these findings, Bertelsmann-

Scott proffers a series of underlying causes for the “mixed picture of missed

opportunities” for Southern Africa’s regional integration, including institutional

limitations, obstacles to sovereign and regional collaboration, and the ongoing

domination of South Africa as the driving financial and productive force in the region.
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By way of counterbalance, the observation is made that other nations within the region

have their individual strengths (forestry management, wildlife management), which

indicate “high-level political engagement” that nevertheless has little impact upon the

success of regional integration and continues to fragment overall efforts to the point of

stagnation.

Mills Soko’s somewhat more recent Notre Europe policy paper, The Political

Economy of Regional Integration in Southern Africa, gives a uniquely insightful analysis

of the forces behind the history and evolution of Southern Africa’s primary regional

integration entities, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the

Southern African Customs Union (SACU), which sets the foundation for his principal

thesis that South Africa’s economic power is both the cause for and the beneficiary of

regional imbalances at every level of the integration enterprise.

Soko draws upon a broad historical perspective and references considerable

academic research to support his notion that South Africa’s dominant position within

both the SADC and the SACU impose upon it serious responsibilities to its sister nations

with respect to economic growth, political frictions, industrialization, the development of

intra-African trade, and the maintenance of international relationships that inure to the

benefit of all within the particular alliance. Soko goes to great lengths to examine the

pros and cons of expanding both groups, exploring the potentials for affiliation with other

regionally affiliated groups in Europe, the Pacific, and the Caribbean. Drawing stronger

conclusions than those of his research predecessors, Soko weighs the challenges facing

the manifold Southern African regional integration efforts and comes to the conclusion
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that present and future roadblocks and impediments may prove just as frustrating as those

of the past.

The conclusions of the prevailing body of research into the efficacy of future

Southern African regional integration paradigms inevitably compare them to those of the

European Union, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Transatlantic Economic

Council, The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, and the Association

of Southeast Asian Nations. When held up to that mirror, Southern Africa’s attempts to

bring its member nations into a functional collaborative community with balanced

responsibilities and benefits therefrom appear nothing less than clumsy.

South Asia’s Challenges to Regional Integration

Supporting our findings that the challenges which Southern Africa has yet to

overcome are remarkably similar to those still faced by the nations of South Asia

(Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka) in their foundering efforts at

regional integration, the November 2014 Asian Economic Integration Monitor (AEIM)

reported that as recently as 2013 “trade integration in Asia was unchanged…both by

intraregional share and intensity,” and that South Asia’s economic and trade ties with the

rest of Asia are in a state of decline. The analysis of this negative state of affairs

indicates that South Asia’s economic and cultural ties are stronger with East Africa than

with the countries within its own region, which remain “relatively isolated” from the rest

of the Asian continent.

As is the case in Southern Africa, the AEIM report details South Asia’s critical

impediments to integration as a result of inadequate infrastructure within and among


White Paper: Regional Integration in Southern Africa: Lessons for South Asia 15

regional state members, making the prospects for both investment return and trade

expansion questionable. In support of that contention, the report provides considerable

detail comparing the growth of free trade agreements (FTAs) in which South Asia

participates (India is signatory to 37, 13 of which are currently in effect) to actual intra-

regional economic and trade activity. The conclusion drawn by the review of the data

presented is that in spite of its efforts to intensify trade with East and Southeast Asia,

South Asia continues to lag behind its neighboring regions in terms of internal regional

integration as well as in establishing viable trade links with Europe, North America, and

Latin America. These conclusions are data-focused and avoid any probing discussion of

the underlying political, ethnic, or cultural factors impacting the ability of South Asia to

effect a genuine regional integration.

For a discussion of the fundamental political economic factors impeding genuine

economic integration in South Asia, the history and underlying objectives of the South

Asia Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) are informative. The United

Nations Conference on Trade and Development’s Priyanka Kher, writing in a 2012

background paper Political Economy of Regional Integration in South Asia, reached

conclusions similar to those of UNCTAD’s National Center for Agricultural Economics

and Policy Research investigator Ramesh Chand, who points out in “International Trade,

Regional Integration and Food Security in South Asia” that while the region is home to

23% of the world’s population, it accounts for merely 3% of global production (GDP).

Both researchers examine the political factors frustrating economic growth under the

myriad regional integration agreements now in force, and ultimately pose similar

questions as to their relevance to the region’s practical economics.


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At the forefront of impediments these authors note are the deeply-rooted historic

ethnic, religious, military, and political differences shared by SAARC member nations.

They note that these conflicts continue to override regional economic and strategic

interests, rendering South Asia as the “least integrated region in the world.”

V.V. Desai, in his 2010 research for Asian Development Bank and reported in

The Political Economy of Regional Cooperation in South Asia, discusses the primary

source of South Asia’s failure to successfully integrate the economic interests of SAARC

member countries as “antagonistic inter-state relations” caused by serious imbalances of

power within the region. He also reports on SAARC’s failed attempts to accelerate

cooperation among its members by way of a Preferential Trading Arrangement (SAPTA),

again pointing to “disharmony among member states” and lack of agreement about the

principal goals of the association. The list of problems hampering effective South Asia

regional integration presented in Desai’s research is extensive.

The totality of the literature reporting upon the causes underlying the parallel

failures of both Southern Africa and South Asia to achieve regional integration is

compelling, and provides fodder for subsequent discussion to follow.

The Significance of the Problem

In the latter part of the 20th Century, the forces of globalization created significant

incentives for neighboring countries within a circumscribed geographical territory to

band together in pursuit of their individual and collective sovereign and regional

economic interests. Those interests persist today and continue to drive activities that
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were defined by research dating back to the 1971 political economics studies of Lindberg

and Scheingold in 1971 as falling within eight specific requisite functional paradigms:

1. Increased trade among nations agreeing to be bound under the umbrella of a

unifying regional integration agreement (RIA).

2. Creation of viable public governmental protocols and institutions operating

under reasonable and productive leadership.

3. Establishment of environmental initiatives that span national boundaries and

to which all regional participants subscribe.

4. Support of regional security through the elimination of exclusionary societal

marginalization and sanctioned cultural alienation or segregation

5. Infrastructure development, financing, and improvements directed at

economic growth.

6. Development of a system of support for private equity investment and growth.

7. Increased communication, economic, social, and cultural interaction with

outside global regions.

8. Investment and cooperative efforts to guarantee regional security.

The current literature provides scant metric or anecdotal evidence to support the

contention that laissez-faire deregulatory approaches--which may be the product of

competing political agendas extant in countries outside the regions those policies

putatively serve—have done much in the way of creating sustained economic growth

among signatories to the RIAs extant in either Southern Africa or South Asia. This

reality has only been exacerbated by the global economic crises of the past decade, giving

rise to a reasonable suspicion that current efforts at regional integration in these two
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widely-separated regions, as demonstrated by increasing social and economic disparity

between and among their putatively affiliated nations are doing more harm than good.

Recent efforts to bring individual states within a geographical region into a

unified, cooperative entity continue to be meet with poor levels of integration pursuant to

fundamental resistance of those states to relax certain aspects of their historic, cultural,

and economic sovereignty. Those same difficulties of genuine integration are clear when

the primary objective is merely the regulation of business and commerce both

internationally and intra-nationally within the region. As a result, while the pressures

driving increased levels of regional integration continue to increase, the prospects for

success in the efforts to achieve that goal continue to flounder.

When compared to other geographic, political, and economic regions throughout

the world—North America, Southeast Asia, Europe, the Caribbean, the Pacific Islands,

where successful cooperative trading blocks and regional integration agreements (RIAs)

provide for the reduction or elimination of trade barriers and increased GDP among

member nations—Southern Africa and South Asia continue to be affected by historic,

political, cultural, and ethnic impediments to shared prosperity.

The regional and global impacts of this phenomenon of parallel systematic failure

in the two regions discussed here cannot be overemphasized.

The regional economies of the world today are interconnected to an

unprecedented degree. Historically, the nations found of the Northern Hemisphere,

where access to raw materials and trading routes have provided the resources and market

access required for industrial and economic development, have been the dominant forces

in the world economy.


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Since the turn of the century, however, the pendulum has swung in the direction

of developing countries heretofore relegated to the sidelines of prosperity. In the

aggregate, those nations now account for 40% of global GDP, a shift strongly influenced

by significantly increased demand for raw materials, market access, and infrastructure

development.

But growth is never a constant upward curve; many of those developing countries

—particularly those of Southern Africa—are impacted heavily by fluctuating raw

materials and energy commodity pricing and are consequently vulnerable to wide swings

in financial and political stability. When those markets are in turbulence, the effect on the

rest of the world’s productivity can be profound.

When efforts at regional integration tailspin downward due to sovereign conflicts

within a regional market, years of progress can be torn asunder with a single violation of

national security. Any political or military provocation between neighbors has the

potential to destroy decades of cooperative trade agreements and create chaos across

global markets.

The world economy is a delicate balancing act; what happens on a distant

continent can have residual—if not direct—consequences for those of other regions. This

perspective motivates a further understanding of the causes behind any particular failure

at regional integration. Such an understanding is vital to any movement away from the

profound skepticism currently evidenced in the contemporary research.


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The Southern Africa Conundrum

The past four decades have seen intensified global proliferation of geographically-

related sovereign alliances endeavoring to improve manifold interactions that involve

economic, political, security, and social concerns. This process of regional integration,

wherein independent political states come together as a whole in furtherance of their

individual and collective interests is rife with challenges, not the least of which is the

surrender on the part of participants of varying degrees of sovereignty over state affairs.

As economics play a determinative and insistent role in the course of individual,

social, political, and cultural outcomes, the commitment of unique sovereign entities to

the collective success of a regionally integrated and aggregated coalition is fundamental

to agreed-upon objectives. Attainment of the commitment of all parties to those

objectives remains a consistent challenge to their organizations and their individual

members. Where that commitment is sporadic and only the ancillary to self-interests,

difficulty ensues.

This difficulty is embodied in the ongoing struggle for the successful regional

integration of the nations of Southern Africa which, when considered in light of stated

objectives, appears to have been riding a slippery downward spiral heading steadfastly

toward the drain of failure. In spite of the successes of other geographically related

entities functioning under international regional integration agreements in North

America, Europe, South America, and Southeast Asia, Southern Africa’s lack of

integrated cohesion over the long term appears to threaten future regional economic and

political progress.
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Southern Africa, comprised of the independent states of Angola, Botswana,

Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and

Zimbabwe, occupies the southernmost one-third of the African continent, territory that is

among the world’s richest repositories of natural resources, enjoying a unique diversity of

ecological habitats populated by a wide variety of wildlife and indigenous people of

varying ethnic cultures. In spite of those assets, a majority of Southern Africa’s countries

suffer economic conditions substantially below the global mean gross domestic product

(GDP) and fail to produce enough food to support their populations.

The history of the region was substantially influenced by European colonial

powers which left behind somewhat fragmented geo-political constructs and conflicts,

remnants of which continue to undermine genuine regional unification. One of the facts

that to this day stands in the way of successful integration is the earlier proliferation of

assorted “plans” and organizations created in the wake of the sweeping political, social,

and economic upheaval that was the consequence of the elimination of a century’s

colonial dominance. Each of these organizations—the Lagos Plan of Action, the

Organization of African Unity, the U.N.’s Economic Commission for Africa, the Abuja

Treaty, the Economic Commission for Africa, the Economic Community of West African

States, the Preferential Trade Area, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa,

the Southern African Development Coordinating Conference, the Southern African

Development Community…the list goes on—was created with the goal of supporting the

evolution of Southern Africa into an effective free trade region enjoying the mutual

benefits of a full economic union and common market. Such disparate associations, each

with narrow industry and tariff issues, have not substantially met their stated objectives.
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The Southern African Customs Union (SACU), one of the more successful and long-

established customs unions in the world and ironically the product of fiat at the hands of

Colonial Britain, to this day contains provisions that remain to be implemented pursuant

to its independence from British influence in 1990. That’s nearly 30 years of “planning”

with no implementation in sight.

Additional impediments to Southern Africa’s successful integration arise pursuant

to the region’s reliance on a limited range of exported products and commodities,

exposing the economy to price fluctuations frequently determined by forces outside their

marketplace and domestic policy purview. Without the proven ability to diversify its

manufacturing ability or product offerings, Southern Africa remains vulnerable to

external forces completely beyond its control.

This is not to say that the export of goods outside the region has not increased in

volume over recent years. World Trade Organization metrics demonstrate an average

growth rate of just over ten percent, but those numbers actually reflect a decline in

Southern Africa’s share of world trade during the same time period at approximately

three percent. This is in comparison to the share of world trade experienced by other

developing economies at over 40 percent. Isolated metrics appear encouraging;

comparative metrics for the economic growth of Southern Africa on a global basis do not.

Challenges to Southern Africa’s ability to access international markets persist, as

evidenced by a significant imbalance in its “customer base.” According to the Economic

Commission for Africa, only 30 percent of exports are shipped to buyers on the African

continent, while 50 percent of goods are exported to Europe and the United States, with

exports to Asia and China remaining at 20 percent of output. Evidence of the failure of
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regional intra-African trade is evidenced by the region’s importation of more than 90

percent of its consumables from sources outside the continent. In other words, less than

20 percent of current trade in Southern Africa occurs between its regional members.

It’s apparent that despite a plethora of regional integration agreements as noted

above, those arrangements have failed to reach their objective of lubricating the gears of

intra-regional trade and commerce.

The statistics, however, should be considered in light of the disparate nature of the

economic, financial, and industrial capacity of all members of the Southern Africa

regional community. Some of the nations within the region have little strength to greatly

influence percentages or statistical evaluations. The full integration of these smaller

nations, if possible, would increase volumes on a limited scale. This is not to say that

such efforts are not worth the results; any integration has an incrementally positive effect

that increases over time.

As challenging as the effective integration of Southern Africa’s less developed

nations has been, the economic, political, industrial, financial and military domination of

South Africa over its regional partners has created an imbalance of influence that

continues to limit progress. In spite of its own internal problems in managing a post-

apartheid economy and the difficulties of overcoming the residual effects of prior

oppression, South Africa—by sheer stint of infrastructure, access to maritime trade

routes, and infusion of Western capital to stimulate its economy—has done little to fulfill

the expectations of its neighbors in terms of economic and technological support. The

economy of South Africa remains insular and holds the purse strings of regional

investment and industrial development, while several of its neighbors’ economies depend
White Paper: Regional Integration in Southern Africa: Lessons for South Asia 24

upon providing South Africa with the labor to support its mining industry. Regional

integration remains vulnerable to criticism of South Africa’s demonstrated lack of

commitment to overcoming the challenges faced by its smaller, weaker neighbors.

A serious obstacle to achieving regional integration Southern Africa lies in

contradictory national political objectives and incompatible economic systems. When one

considers the wide variations in political-economic structures, from Zambia’s

“Humanism” and Mozambique’s socialism, to South Africa’s “rainbow nation”, the

failure of intra-regional trade throughout Southern Africa does not seem so perplexing.

The structures of many Southern African national economies are contradictory to

fundamentals of genuine regional integration. The nations of Southern Africa—with the

sole exception of South Africa—produce little in the way of finished goods and are

dependent upon the exploitation of raw materials and natural resources, often with

negative environmental consequences for themselves and their neighbors. Ironically,

considering the extraordinary lengths these individual nations went to in order to rid

themselves of colonial control, their current failure to establish progressive political

leadership and economic foresight now depend upon those historic colonial powers as

their primary export targets. Much of Southern Africa, then, continues to be the victim of

ongoing exploitation at the hands of distant, more industrially developed economic

powers. The consequence of this is a propagation of the status quo, wherein an absence

manufacturing productivity inhibits trade within the region and defeats the objectives of

regional integration.

When a majority of the nations have economies dependent upon agriculture or

mining, but lack the technology to process the products of those endeavors for
White Paper: Regional Integration in Southern Africa: Lessons for South Asia 25

distribution in the regional or global marketplace, they have little parity with those

nation’s harboring technical expertise and developed infrastructure systems. Today’s

South African Development Committee (SADC) member countries may embrace similar

objectives in economic and social integration across frontiers, but the stated goals of

democratization through political integration requires a more profound mindset evolution

and the acceptance of common shared sovereign values and an adjustment in particular

security, jurisprudential, and policy enforcement protocols. Achieving consensus among

states once embroiled in internecine pre-colonial conflicts requires a revision of

individual political values wherein the common good becomes the motivating norm; the

perceived notion of that norm continues to fluctuate among the countries of Southern

Africa.

Contributing to the difficulties of achieving consensual political integration are

the social, cultural, and ethnic challenges found within member states, including the

unfulfilled and profound healthcare imperatives of dealing with serious communicable

disease outbreaks, the suppression of AIDS, and the need for mutual acceptance of the

region’s diverse cultures. Generational cross-cultural acceptance and social engagement

through artistic expression and increasing levels of tribal inter-marriage, however,

continue to occur with the passage of time and may presage future progress on other

fronts.

Additional impediments to successful regional integration in Southern Africa are

apparent in the areas of intra- and inter-governmental bureaucratic inefficiencies,

workforce educational levels below the level of competing global regions, as well as a

“work ethic” that can only be characterized as uncompetitive. More obviously, Southern
White Paper: Regional Integration in Southern Africa: Lessons for South Asia 26

Africa suffers from a grossly undeveloped regional infrastructure that severely impacts

intra-regional commerce and trade.

Symptomatic of the political and bureaucratic problems inhibiting full integration

are the myriad agreements mentioned earlier that continue to be signed by various sub-

groups in the South African sovereign mix. Such treaties, protocols, contracts, unions,

and formal agreements, while looking good on paper, are commonly overlooked and

subject to prolonged periods of debate and ratification, during which action and genuine

policy implementation remain elusive.

The very notion of regional integration, where interdependent capitalism

motivates all industry and commerce, requires a delicate balancing of individual and

collective interests. Southern Africa, the nations of which carry multi-billion dollar debt

loads eroding efforts at capital accrual, continues to struggle with the concept of

cooperation as opposed to competition, where self-interests are weighed against the

collective good. That balance is essential to successful regional integration, and until that

balance is achieved, all the aforementioned impediments and challenges will continue to

block the route to progress.

South Asia: Parallels to Southern Africa

Geographically distant from Southern Africa by 5,000 miles, South Asia, where

the nations of Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Maldives, and Sri Lanka share

frontiers and proximity to China as well as some of the planet’s most dramatic

topography, covers a vast area amounting to more than 3% of the planet’s land mass, and

is home to more than a quarter of the human population. Like Southern Africa, South
White Paper: Regional Integration in Southern Africa: Lessons for South Asia 27

Asia is ethnically diverse, troubled by struggling national economies, and confronts

enormous challenges in providing adequate food to the region’s population. South Asia

does not enjoy the bounty of natural resources found in Southern Africa, but does have

greater geographic proximity to established trade routes and to markets outside the

region.

Although, like Southern Africa, efforts at regional integration in South Asia have

been ongoing for nearly 40 years, it remains one of the least economically integrated and

politically volatile areas in the world. A history of friction between nations pursuant to

long-standing political and military conflict has taken a serious toll on efforts to stimulate

intra-regional integration on every level. Evidence of that is the March 2014 World Bank

data revealing that South Asia’s 600 million citizens are in such limited circumstances as

to constitute fully 44% of the world’s population living in poverty, 500 million of which

subsist on less than two dollars per day.

In spite of South Asia’s economic growth over the past two decades and the

widespread acceptance by political leaders of the principles of regional integration with

their promise of enhanced intra-regional trade providing the potential to increase GDP far

beyond the global productivity growth rate and to improve the economic well-being of

South Asia’s citizens, consensus over principles has not been translated into coherent

policies or action, and has thus far failed to produce positive, tangible outcomes. To that

point, agreements in pursuit of effective political, economic, and security integration

protocols have been in place since the 1985 founding of the South Asian Association for

Regional Economic Cooperation (SAARC), with periodic restatements of interest and

commitment demonstrated in the SAARC Preferential Trading Arrangement and a the


White Paper: Regional Integration in Southern Africa: Lessons for South Asia 28

setting of a target date of 2016 for yet another attempt at unification with the projected

formation of the South Asian Free Trade Area. The question, however, is whether or not

these ongoing “agreements to agree” will have any significant impact when intra-regional

trade lags woefully behind the rate of exports outside the region. Several South Asian

partners who enjoy wider market access outside the region than others, and rather than

trading with those others regional partners, have increased exports tenfold over the past

decade. This results in the larger South Asian countries—India, Bangladesh, and

Pakistan—experiencing significant export growth, while depressing the percentage of

intra-regional trade at the expense of less formidable regional partners.

These imbalances—akin to those of South Africa’s dominance of Southern Africa

—are primarily driven by India’s strength as an exporter and its demonstrated low level

of reliance upon its regional trading partners for either raw materials, industrial

technology, infrastructure, or access to trade routes. The product of this is regional

political volatility, distrust and increased levels of economic competition rather than

collaboration.

Acknowledging the legion of intra-regional tariffs that continue to inhibit trade

across regional frontiers, there are even more onerous practical impediments to trade

within South Asia rarely addressed in the agreements for which politicians periodically

congratulate themselves. Political and topographical geography play no small part in the

intra-regional economic imbalances. Just as Southern Africa’s Zimbabwe, Botswana,

Zambia, and Malawi struggle to access international maritime ports, the most efficient

and technologically-equipped of which are controlled by South Africa, South Asia’s

landlocked countries of Afghanistan, Nepal, and Bhutan are dependent upon Pakistan,
White Paper: Regional Integration in Southern Africa: Lessons for South Asia 29

India, and to a much lesser extent upon Bangladesh for access to international shipping

facilities. Terrestrial transport in the region is equally problematic; the terrain throughout

most of the northern limits of South Asia is forbidding. The terrain in northern Pakistan

and throughout much of Afghanistan is among the most rugged on the planet. Looming

over the very cultures of Nepal and Bhutan are The Himalayas, where viable surface

trade routes are primitive at best. This lack of adequate surface infrastructure, coupled

with limited access to port services, consigns much of South Asia to patterns of limited

economic growth, and is the natural source of potential resentment and political distrust.

Like South Africa’s post-apartheid industrial and technological growth which has

led to its domination of Southern Africa, India has established itself as one of the world’s

fastest growing economies and finds itself in a strong leadership role in South Asia.

While all of South Asia has seen incremental growth in GDP over the past two decades,

India’s has been 40% higher than the region as a whole, and nearly double that of some

of its regional partners. With its exports to its regional neighbors amounting to less than

5% of its total global exports, and its imports from regional partners amounting to less

than 10% of its total imports, the economic and industrial strength of India does not

translate into more or better business volumes for the region at large.

Regional political conflicts between the region’s two most influential parties,

India and Pakistan, have been a long standing obstacle to effective regional integration,

and have had seriously negative affect upon the prospects for economic, cultural, social,

or military collaboration between the two. Since the “partition” of India by colonial

England following World War II into the republics of Pakistan and India, political and

religious differences have been expressed in a series of military conflicts as recently as


White Paper: Regional Integration in Southern Africa: Lessons for South Asia 30

1999. India, a secular nation with a predominantly Hindu population, shares a long

frontier with Pakistan, an Islamic Republic that is home to a strong Muslim majority

population. The military conflicts which followed their independence from colonial

control, while resolved to the point that neither side is actively invading the other, have

had a generational impact upon relations between the two countries. With a shared

border on the Arabian Sea, periodic territorial transgressions over fishing rights and

shipping lanes give rise to the occasional taking of prisoners by each nation. Both

nations continue to develop nuclear military weapons with the expressed intent to

constrain the aggressions of one another, hardly a policy conducive to integrated intra-

regional understanding or cooperation. Trade liberalization efforts between the two

nations continue, and the exchange of scientific and computer technology has put both

Pakistan and India into leadership roles in the information age, none of which translates

into greater transactional intra-regional economic or social enterprise.

Just as Southern African nations have a history of sovereign and tribal disputes

that continue to affect regional cooperation, intra-regional military conflicts between

India and Pakistan, as well as the internal political strife of Nepal and Bangladesh on the

one hand and Sri Lanka on the other, have done little to promote successful regional

integration, and make prospects for improved trust and increased rates of integration

questionable. If South Asia is unable to reconcile the political and social differences

among its member partners, progress toward integration will continue to flounder.

Given the clear parallel challenges to the realization of successful, progressive

regional integration shared by Southern Africa and South Asia, the most obvious

impediment to be overcome are the notions of individual sovereignty. Cooperation and


White Paper: Regional Integration in Southern Africa: Lessons for South Asia 31

collaboration does not necessarily come at the expense of cultural, religious, or ethnic

identity. But protectionism imperils regional cooperation, which is an imperative of

successfully overcoming the obstacles of environmental destruction, water shortages,

urban blight, inadequate or nonexistent transportation systems, energy production, and

disaster recovery (the recent earthquake in Nepal). Exploiting one’s own natural

resources to feed the industrial might of a neighbor (as in the case of Zambia and South

Africa), or exploiting an impoverished workforce to increase production output (as in the

case of Bangladesh and India) may today have the appearance of “integration”, but

without foresight into the long term consequences of such resource-output imbalances,

the future will be more troubled than the politicians may anticipate.

For both Southern Africa and South Asia, increases in intra-regional trade and

mutual support and investment hold the promise of prosperity on a par with the rest of the

world. To achieve such a transformation—while both of these regions are competing for

the distinction for being the poorest on the planet—the value of traditional sovereign

concerns must be measured against the likelihood of deprivation and economic failure.

For some countries, politics based upon principles of national pride may have a price far

beyond present appearances; as history shows, where a competitive environment exists

among unequal partners and those inequalities are not recognized and resolved, entropy

frequently ensues. When dominant partners (India and South Africa) ignore the needs of

their partners and foster economic relationships of resource exploitation rather than those

of interdependent infrastructure development, production, and trade, both intra-regional

and global relations, expectations, and perceptions suffer.


White Paper: Regional Integration in Southern Africa: Lessons for South Asia 32

The history of Southern Africa, and its ongoing failure to realize the political and

economic objectives of the SADC should be instructive to the leadership of South Asian

countries. The geographic latitudes, climates, and cultures of the two regions may be

quite different, but the issues are remarkably alike. Both regions are affected by patterns

of conflicting commitments to extra-sovereign control, with cyclical periods of political

will making the achievement of common goals an elusive ideal.

Political will requires more than another set of free trade agreements if it is to

translate into a people’s well-being. Institutional commitments must be followed by

concrete behaviors, financial investments, and commercial activities that support the

objectives of true regional integration. Where the capacity and determination of

individuals and their sovereign governments are sufficient to demonstrate consistent

political will, change is possible. Where they are insufficient, not even the status quo is

easily maintained.

Conclusion

Southern Africa and South Asia, at first blush highly distinct in terms of their

histories, climates, cultures, ethnicities, and government systems, are shown by the

research to have many parallels. Their individual influence upon the myriad factors

affecting the well-being of their own citizens and of the world of large—GNP, poverty

rates, ecological preservation, natural resource depletion, food supplies—driven in large

part by their ever-expanding populations, have no global comparatives. When just one of

those regions is home to 25% of humanity, and when those 500 million people endure

lifelong squalor, poor nutrition, and disease vulnerability, that region’s economic vitality
White Paper: Regional Integration in Southern Africa: Lessons for South Asia 33

and industrial capacity or the lack thereof cannot but help to affect everyone on the

planet. The problems of South Asia and Southern Africa, then, are problems shared by

all.

Once these regions completely threw off the shackles of European colonization in

the mid-20th Century, they each struggled through a series of internecine political

conflicts and wars that have had prolonged negative residual effect upon efforts at

cooperative regional integration; old resentments die hard and do little to mitigate cultural

and ethnic mistrust. The result is a lack of genuine belief by individual regional partners

in the promise of shared positive outcomes. Smaller, weaker nations within each region,

hopeful for a regime of mutual support and economic growth, have been consistently

frustrated and marginalized by their stronger regional partners. Neither India nor South

Africa have demonstrated the ability to share leadership within their respective regions,

frequently ignoring the sovereign interests of weaker partners in favor of their own. The

result has been decades of promises made with the best of intentions and little else in the

way of shared economic or productive growth for the particular region as a whole.

This less than promising pattern is well documented in a wide range of findings

and economic analysis published by academic and governmental researchers over the

past four decades. The review of the literature pertinent to these issues is unique in the

unanimity of researchers’ findings, none of which project realistically positive outcomes

absent systemic paradigm changes.

The body of research dating from the 1970s to today delivers a clear warning: if

the dominant regional partners (India and South America) do not unilaterally engage in

the development of their weaker regional partners from several important standpoints—
White Paper: Regional Integration in Southern Africa: Lessons for South Asia 34

infrastructure, financing, removal of tariffs and logistical impediments, healthcare,

resource preservation, industrial and technological development, education—matters will

only deteriorate, the imbalances of regional power will continue to grow unchecked, and

the prospects for the prosperity of all regional partners will diminish. Short term gains in

the GDP of the dominant partners will likely erode in the face of overall regional decline

brought upon by the social and economic collapse of weaker partners.

While the preponderance of past and present research paints a dismal picture, that

same research frequently offers data-based guidelines leading to brighter outcomes for

both Southern Africa and South Asia. Among the cornerstones that must be in place in

order to effect meaningful regional balance and development based upon research

findings are:

 Alterations in trading structure and composition

 Investments in the industrialization of weaker regional partners by

dominant regional partners

 Debt forgiveness upon the achievement of regionally agrred-upon

milestones

 Development of more efficient business and trading protocols

 Intra-regional fiscal consolidation

 Refinement of cooperative and competitive policies

 Civil service reformation

 Trans-regional infrastructure development

 A commitment to the creation of human capital and skills

development
White Paper: Regional Integration in Southern Africa: Lessons for South Asia 35

 Cultural adoption of technological tools and systems

 Capital support of research, development, and systems

management

The challenges to achieve successful regional integration in both Southern Africa

and South Asia are many. Whether they are sufficient to completely overshadow

regional objectives is a question for national leaders to answer. The failure to address

those challenges vigorously and without regard to issues of individual sovereign interests

will serve only to consign these two regions and their member nations to a future sadly

resembling the current state of affairs.

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