Africa: Why APEC and ASEAN Economic Models are Ideal
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| Economic blocs |
The Eurozone’s long running economic woes have had a domino effect with political changes effected in quick succession in Italy, Greece and Spain last month alone. The winter of discontent is showing no signs of relenting, what with daily scenes of ‘mass action’ from Rome to Madrid, London and Athens.
With such ominous clouds circling a regional economic community once vaunted as the model for free trade areas and regional economic communities, shouldn’t Africa’s own regional integration come to screeching halt? Not quite if happenings particularly in the geographic and ideological south are anything to go by.
In the sunny resort cities of Bali, Indonesia and Honolulu, USA, the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) were busy last month, signing agreements on free trade agreements and generally ratcheting up plans to consolidate economic integration.
It would appear that the pendulum of prosperity is swinging quite dramatically away from Europe and towards the Asia – Pacific region. President Barrack Obama has missed few occasions to declare US’s keen interest in Asia – no doubt nudged on by the fact that Asia alone accounts for 50 per cent of the world’s economic output.
A key recommendation of the APEC meeting in idyllic Hawaii was that the 21 member so-called ‘Pacific Rim’ countries will henceforth throw open their airports, seaports and terrestrial border points for free trade within the cross-continental region. African bureaucrats and captains of industry should surely sit up and contemplate the import of such an initiative.
The APEC meeting was quickly followed by the ASEAN one, whose summit closed with loads of goodies at the end of November in Indonesia. Watching the ASEAN meeting in progress, it was obvious our own EAC has a lot of catching up to, unless of course Secretary General Dr Richard Sezibera and the bureaucrats in Arusha have an ingenious innovation up their sleeves. This year’s ASEAN edition attracted the attendance of President Barrack Obama, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao as well as delegations from India, Japan and South Korea even though these are not ASEAN members.
Would the US President skip official business in Washington to hobnob with EAC leaders? Most unlikely, and herein lies a lesson for EAC, SADC, COMESA, ECOWAS, etc. Unless the African region makes economic sense, it will not make sense to nations of the world that are dead serious about the bottom line – the US and China are the leading example of this economic determinism.
The US for instance is putting a lot of premium on APEC because, to appropriate the Foreign Policy magazine lingo, the EU has failed or is failing. Any geopolitical club that brings on the round table economic giants like China, Japan, Russia, Canada and Australia must be given due recognition, so reckons Obama and his strategists.
In the case of ASEAN, the 10 member organization could as well be cited as the ‘Tiger economies region’. It would appear that the sheer innovation in social economic transformation in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Philippines has gone contagious spreading the good tidings to places like Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam that have long suffered leadership motivated cataclysms.
More importantly, leading world economies have noticed the significance of the banding together of ASEAN countries so much so that they come calling for a piece of the pie whenever ASEAN leaders congregate to chart way forward. Now that there was no mention of the presence of an EAC, AU, SADC, COMESA or any other African entity in Bali during the ASEAN meet, let us assume that Africa does not register on the ASEAN radar!
Not all is lost for Africa though. In economic literature, scholarly and administrative, the continent is identified as the next frontier for investment – probably after Asia. This will however only happen in our lifetimes if our sovereignty is ceded to strong regional organizations that make sense globally rather than the dwarfish efforts multiplied across the continent with little or no impact.
To return to the EU matter, analysts will have already noticed that EU, IMF and World Bank purse strings are about to be unleashed going by statements in the press. Analysts would also have noticed the sense of determination particularly by Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sarkozy. Analysts would have noticed too, that Greece, under Papademos and after Papendreo (what alliteration from the ancient civilization!) and Italy under Mario Monti are both calming and steadying. As a regional bloc, EU has only been jolted, not buried. AU should go full throttle to market the region as a cohesive entity.
By Bob Wekesa.
The writer [email protected] is a journalist studying at Communication University of China.