New Challenges to African Regionalism

The changing face of international relations, the technological developments accompanied by changes in the organization of production, together with a trend towards the formation of more integrated trading blocs, have not only revived interest in regionalism in Africa and other regions of the world, they have also posed some formidable challenges to the promotion of regional integration in Africa and, indeed, African development as a whole. In particular, the expanding scope of European Union development cooperation, the impact of the end of Cold War which has made the developing countries no longer of geostrategic interest to opposing factions, the substantial implications of the Uruguay Round, the completion of the Single European Market project, the creation of the European Economic Area, the enlargement of the European Union to include several new members and the ongoing and increasingly wide-ranging dialogue with the economies in transition in Central and Eastern Europe — all these factors have combined to marginalize African interests. They have combined to undermine the basis of Euro-African relations on which Lomé is predicated, making it increasingly irrelevant to the African ACP states.