Intergovernmental Authority on Development and East African Community: Viability of Merger

Presenter's country

Ethiopia

Start Date

27-5-2016 1:30 PM

End Date

27-5-2016 2:35 PM

Location

Hall I

Submission type

Presentation

Abstract

Constituting regional economic community has immense benefits to the societies within a given region. Regional Economic Communities (RECs) would play an inevitable role in increasing people to people contacts and gradually forging interdependence in different sectors, which used to limited to government to government. Often, such bondage within a given RECs among states in general and societies in particular paves the way to address the ills of the respective societies’ in a collaborative manner. In fact, it is plausible to argue that there is a conducive environment to constitute and build up RECs in the present globalizing world. Parallel to the global trend, Pan Africanism promotes the integration of economies and people under RECs. The establishment and build-up of RECs in different parts of Africa among other things tantamount to lay the founding blocs for the aspired United States of Africa. Merging Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and East African Community (EAC) into bigger East African Community like it has been happening in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and Economic Community of Western African States (ECOWAS) is a novel idea. Such merger would be expected to serve as a vehicle for a prosperous and peaceful bigger East African Community and consequently facilitates the integration of Africa. Given that, the research is designed to scrutinize the viability of a merger between IGAD and EAC. To meet this objective, the study has set out two basic research questions: What are the viable conditions to merge IGAD and EAC? What are the possible challenges to the merger of IGAD and EAC? Finally, the study, to achieve its objective, employed a qualitative research approach which used a wider review of secondary data.

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May 27th, 1:30 PM May 27th, 2:35 PM

Intergovernmental Authority on Development and East African Community: Viability of Merger

Hall I

Constituting regional economic community has immense benefits to the societies within a given region. Regional Economic Communities (RECs) would play an inevitable role in increasing people to people contacts and gradually forging interdependence in different sectors, which used to limited to government to government. Often, such bondage within a given RECs among states in general and societies in particular paves the way to address the ills of the respective societies’ in a collaborative manner. In fact, it is plausible to argue that there is a conducive environment to constitute and build up RECs in the present globalizing world. Parallel to the global trend, Pan Africanism promotes the integration of economies and people under RECs. The establishment and build-up of RECs in different parts of Africa among other things tantamount to lay the founding blocs for the aspired United States of Africa. Merging Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and East African Community (EAC) into bigger East African Community like it has been happening in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and Economic Community of Western African States (ECOWAS) is a novel idea. Such merger would be expected to serve as a vehicle for a prosperous and peaceful bigger East African Community and consequently facilitates the integration of Africa. Given that, the research is designed to scrutinize the viability of a merger between IGAD and EAC. To meet this objective, the study has set out two basic research questions: What are the viable conditions to merge IGAD and EAC? What are the possible challenges to the merger of IGAD and EAC? Finally, the study, to achieve its objective, employed a qualitative research approach which used a wider review of secondary data.