Regional Integration and Development in Eastern and Southern Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa has attracted global concern twice in the past quarter of a century: 1960 was viewed as the year of Africa, in hope and expectation, while 1985 was one of misery and disappointment. This part of Africa now embraces forty-five poor developing countries, twenty-seven of which are the least developed countries in the world, and 66 per cent of which are low-income countries. Only eight nations have populations of more than 10 million while another eight have less than 1 million inhabitants each. Thus Sub-Saharan Africa can be considered as a cluster of poor small countries. Their development performance in the last two decades has been extremely disappointing; this is shown by their stagnant, or even negative, rates of growth of per capita income. What is even worse is the fear that the prospects for the rest of this century appear to be dismal. The region is now facing a crisis of development which seems to be insurmountable in the short run.