The Role of African Regional Economic Communities in promoting IntraAfrican Trade

Abstract

This paper was undertaken to investigate on the role of African regional economic communities (RECs) in promoting intra-African trade. It attempts to respond to the following questions: What are the efforts so far made by African Regional Economic Communities to promote the intra-African trade? What is the profile of intra- African trade? And what are the limiting factors for promoting the intra-African trade? It adopted a descriptive research design with both qualitative and quantitative data gathered from secondary sources, and content analysis was adopted to analyse the available data. Though the intra-African trade is still low compared to other regions all over the world, some African Regional Economic Communities have made an important step toward promoting the intra-trade. However, some challenges such as infrastructure inadequacy and deficiencies among others keep on hampering intra-African trade promotion.