Abstract:
Most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are members of one or more regional or sub-regional arrangements that seek to promote economic coordination, cooperation or integration among member countries. The various African regional economic blocs, and indeed the individual countries that comprise their membership, are at different stages of development and implementation of their regional arrangement. This paper examines the socio-economic integration and collective security in the North African region. Qualitatively driven with reliance on secondary sources of data, it argues that efforts at economic integration in the region is at its lowest ebb as a result of serious security threats arising from the Arab Spring which swept through the region in late 2010 and 2011. The paper also discovers that regional economic integration efforts is further jeopardized by the domestic problems and attempts at reforms of hitherto authoritarian regimes by countries of the region and concludes that until there is relative peace and security in that region, it will remain the least integrated within the African continent. |
