1. Ole Thonke would like to thank the Erling Christensens Foundation in Denmark for the financial grant that made this research project possible. The paper is a product of extensive travel in Africa from 2009 to 2011 and a substantial literature review. It draws on numerous interviews with politicians and national as well as regional officials including AU Secretary-General Jean Ping, Ibn Chambas, former Executive Secretary of ECOWAS, and many more.
2. For example Alexander J Yeats , What can be expected from African regional trade arrangements? Some empirical evidence , Policy Research Working Paper, The World Bank Development Research Group, November 1998,http://elibrary.worldbank.org/content/workingpaper/10.1596/1813-9450-2004(accessed 17 June 2011) .
3. In accordance with the definition in Hans van Ginkel and Luk van Langenhove, Introduction and context , in Hans van Ginkel , Julius Court and Luk van Langenhove ,Integrating Africa: perspectives on regional integration and development, Tokyo : United Nations University Press , 2003 , 1 – 9 .
4. The so-called ‘trade creation’ effect implies an increase in trade as consumers will buy more when prices are lowered. At the same time, however, ‘trade diversion’ effects will also occur as production may shift from a more efficient outsider to a more inefficient member country, resulting in a loss of consumer welfare as a result of the external tariff.
5. See for example Richard E Baldwin, On the measurement of dynamic effects of integration,Empirica20(2) (1993), 129–144, 131. The mentioned gains are ‘static effects’ and are harvested in the short and medium term, but also so-called long-term ‘dynamic effects’ are attributed to regional integration. Dynamic effects arise as the increase in output from the static effects is assumed to lead to higher investment and an increase in the capital stock, which in turn increases output.