"... by including accounts of the flows of goods and people that take place informally, and frequently illegally, [Bach] has lifted the lid on a little-observed, but vitally important aspect of contemporary African life." --International Affairs The dynamics of integration and disintegration in sub-Saharan Africa at the end of the millennium result from a combination of upheavals in the international system since the end of the Cold War and the crisis of the state within Africa itself.
Composite work on political and economic integration of countries of Africa south of Sahara - covers the economic structure, national planning, industrialization, monetary policy, public administration, nationalist movements, political parties, trade, tariffs, transport, education, etc. Statistical tables, maps, and bibliography pp. 397 to 402.
The East African Community (EAC) has been among the fastest growing regions in sub-Saharan Africa in the past decade or so. Nonetheless, the recent growth path will not be enough to achieve middle-income status and substantial poverty reduction by the end of the decade—the ambition of most countries in the region. This paper builds on methodologies established in the growth literature to identify a group of countries that achieved growth accelerations and sustained growth to use as benchmarks to evaluate the prospects, and potential constraints, for EAC countries to translate their recent growth upturn into sustained high growth. We find that EAC countries compare favorably to the group of sustained growth countries—macroeconomic and government stability, favorable business climate, and strong institutions—but important differences remain. EAC countries have a smaller share of exports, lower degree of financial deepening, lower levels of domestic savings, higher reliance on donor aid, and limited physical infrastructure and human capital. Policy choices to address some of these shortcomings could make a difference in whether the EAC follows the path of sustained growth or follows other countries where growth upturns later fizzled out.
This open access book explores how contemporary integration policies and practices are not just about migrants and minority groups becoming part of society but often also reflect deliberate attempts to undermine their inclusion or participation. This affects individual lives as well as social cohesion. The book highlights the variety of ways in which integration and disintegration are related to, and often depend on each other. By analysing how (dis)integration works within a wide range of legal and institutional settings, this book contributes to the literature on integration by considering (dis)integration as a highly stratified process. Through featuring a fertile combination of comparative policy analyses and ethnographic research based on original material from six European and two non-European countries, this book will be a great resource for students, academics and policy makers in migration and integration studies. Book Presentation: On April 22, 2021, the University of Sheffield hosted the book presentation on “Politics of (Dis)Integration”. During this event, the editors, Sophie Hinger and Reinhard Schweitzer, discussed the book. The event was chaired by Aneta Piekut and Jean-Marie Lafleur was the discussant. Please find the recording here: https://eu-lti.bbcollab.com/collab/ui/session/playback.
The contributions identify and review current issues of regionalism and regional integration within the era of globalization in the African context. Their approaches present different theoretical and regional perspectives which provide new insights, challenge existing concepts and perceptions and contribute to an enriched debate.
The African American population in the United States has always been seen as a single entity: a “Black America” with unified interests and needs. In his groundbreaking book, Disintegration, Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist Eugene Robinson argues that over decades of desegregation, affirmative action, and immigration, the concept of Black America has shattered. Instead of one black America, now there are four: • a Mainstream middle-class majority with a full ownership stake in American society; • a large, Abandoned minority with less hope of escaping poverty and dysfunction than at any time since Reconstruction’s crushing end; • a small Transcendent elite with such enormous wealth, power, and influence that even white folks have to genuflect; • and two newly Emergent groups—individuals of mixed-race heritage and communities of recent black immigrants—that make us wonder what “black” is even supposed to mean.
This examination of the politics of ethnicity and nation-building in Africa stresses the trend towards subnationalist autonomy and away from a singular, state-centric system based on the Western model. Forrest ranges across the continent to explore a variety of subnational movements.
The views and perspectives adopted by A.I. Asiwaju and D. Bach appear sufficiently distinct, yet they converge on several key issues: i.e., the informal achievement of regionalization in Africa through kinship and other non-state networks; the resistance of Africans to boundaries inherited from the colonial period; and the consequences of the arbitrariness of these boundaries. Anyone who has ever crossed the Seme border between the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the Republic of Benin cannot but subscribe to the perceptions shared by the two authors. Whatever the purpose of the trip, travellers crossing the border share the experience of being in a lawless area: the occasional traveller who behaves suspiciously will immediately attract the attention of the immigration officer who begins to search through his papers scrupulously, looking for any error; on the other hand, the market woman, who knows the system, crosses with ease. The popularization of these border scenes by novels and video productions is significant evidence of the intensity of transborder movements in West Africa, and of the constraints as well as the resources offered by the borders. This dual reality of what appears as an obstacle to the implementation of institutionalized regional integration schemes and as the booster of an informal market-driven trade flow, is widely documented and discussed in the two papers.
