African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) and Economic Development in Nigeria

Clogs in the Wheel of Progress

Abstract

A puzzling question concerns why the African Union has failed to achieve its core mandate of regional integration and 
cooperation of its fifty-five member states. The African Union’s integration efforts and policies led by its institutions only 
seem to scratch aspects of the integration process which has encouraged a deliberate disregard for systems and conditions 
necessary for a real African integration to occur like the European model. Economic, political, and social integration are the 
broad options available to the AU to drive the integration process for its member states but despite the AU’s structures and 
organs which are capable of absorbing these aspects of integration based on existing regionalization that exists in various 
blocs, the AU is still far from achieving its mandate to integrate African states. Therefore, by employing the use of the case 
study method, this paper focuses on the inherent lack of willpower by most AU members to crave real development and 
African cooperation which is evident in aspects of the economic and political integration pursued by member states. It 
highlights the necessary precursors that enable socio-political and economic cohesion of states, which the AU lacks. 
Moreover, this issue area sets the topic within a broader debate on AU’s future and argues that the ‘internal dynamics’ alone 
is a symptom of member states’ unwillingness to compromise to achieve its core mandate of an integrated Africa and for 
Africa to attain continental integration, the AU has to end engaging in selective integration processes but rather embrace 
the entire provisions to become fully integrated