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32 J. World Trade 115 (1998)
Multilateralism and Africa's Regional Economic Communities

handle is hein.kluwer/jwt0032 and id is 613 raw text is: Journal of World Trade 32(4): 115-138 1998. 0 1998 Kluwer Law International. Printed in Great Britain. Multilateralism and Africa's Regional Economic Communities Teshome MULAT* I. INTRODUCTION In the late 1960s and early 1970s disappointments with the post-colonial economy led to regionalism in parts of the Third World and encouraged South-South trade and economic co-operation among developing countries. Such a move was also prompted by the quest for non-alignment in the tug of the Cold War. The implication of this for the development of domestic economic policy was also not supportive of trade liberalization and multilateralism generally. Many countries adopted an import- substitution industrialization strategy and opted for socialism. The nation State sought to achieve by regionalism, bilateral trade, South-South co-operation and countertrade certain basic needs and self-sufficiency goals which were deemed unattainable by other means. Africa, if not an initiator of new development ideas, has shown an inclination to paddle along current trends. However, two to three decades down that route, many of the regional organizations in Africa, often hurriedly created, remained in limbo, some kept changing their names and others eventually collapsed.' The attempt to change the direction of trade also remained largely unrealized. Africa's share of world trade, which was always small or even insignificant, fluctuated and reduced even further. The terms of trade against African exports (except petroleum) continued to deteriorate and the debt burden reached levels that required debt relief (involving mainly debt cancellation and rescheduling negotiations with multilateral and bilateral creditors). After the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the conclusion of the Uruguay Round trade negotiations (which culminated in the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO)), there appears to be a revival of both multilateralism and regionalism. The European Union (EU) is again setting the example2 of engineering a * Policy Analysis Support Unit (PAsu), the Organization of African Unity (OAU). The author would like to thank Mr F. Alipui, Dr David F. Luke and Dr M.I. Mah'moud of the OAU for their comments on the original draft, and acknowledges the financing of the study project by the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF). The views in this study are those of the author and not of the OAU. I For example, the East African Community (formed in 1919) eventually collapsed. The West African Economic Community (1970) was superseded by the Economic and Monetary Union of West Africa (UEMOA), the Preferential Trade Area (PTA) by the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the Customs and Economic Union of Central African States (UDEAC) was transformed in 1997 to Communaut6 Economique et Mon&aire de l'Afrique Centrale (CEMAC). Similar developments in Latin America are also widely reported. See, for example, Diana Tussie (1987) The Less Developed Countries and the World Trading System: A Challenge to the GATT, London: Pinter Publishers Ltd., at pp. 104-135. 2 As it did the first time around when it was established in 1957 as the European Economic Community. Copyright © 2007 by Kluwer Law International. All rights reserved. No claim asserted to original government works.

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