This book explores regionalism in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and highlights the influence of the European Union (EU) as an extra-regional actor on the organization and integration process. The analysis is guided by theory and explains the emergence, institutional design and performance of SADC’s major integration projects in the issue areas of the economy, security and infrastructure. It provides in this way a profound assessment of the organization as a whole. The study shows that South Africa plays a regional key role as driver for integration while external influence of the EU is ambivalent in character because it unfolds a supportive or obstructive impact. The author argues that the EU gains influence over regional integration processes in the SADC on the basis of patterns of asymmetric interdependence and becomes a ‘game-changer’ insofar as it facilitates or impedes solutions to regional cooperation problems.

This comparative book debates migration and regional integration in the two regional economic blocs, namely the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The book takes a historical and nuanced citizenship approach to integration by analysing regional integration from the perspective of non-state actors and how they negotiate various structures and institutions in their pursuit for life and livelihood in a contemporary context marked by mobility and economic fragmentation.

This book examines social, economic and political issues in West, Eastern and Southern Africa in relation to borders, human mobility and regional integration. In the process, it highlights the innovative aspects of human agency on the African continent, and presents a range of empirical case studies that shed new light on Africa’s social, economic and political realities. Further, the book explores cooperation between African nation-states, including their historical socioeconomic interconnections and governance of transboundary natural resources. Moreover, the book examines the relationship between the spatial mobility of borders and development, and the migration regimes of nation-states that share contiguous borders in different geographic territories. Further topics include the coloniality of borders, sociocultural and ethnic relations, and the impact of physical borders on human mobility and wellbeing. Given its scope, the book represents a unique resource that offers readers a wealth of new insights into today’s Africa.

Exploring the formation, evolution and effectiveness of the regional security arrangements of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), Nathan examines a number of vital and troubling questions: ∗ why has SADC struggled to establish a viable security regime? ∗ why has it been unable to engage in successful peacemaking?, and ∗ why has it defied the optimistic prognosis in the early 1990s that it would build a security community in Southern Africa? He argues that the answers to these questions lie in the absence of common values among member states, the weakness of these states and their unwillingness to surrender sovereignty to the regional organization. Paradoxically, the challenge of building a co-operative security regime lies more at the national level than at the regional level. The author's perspective is based on a unique mix of insider access, analytical rigour and accessible theory.

This edited volume discusses the role of innovation and regional integration in economic development in Africa. Over the past five decades, post-colonial African countries have struggled to break loose from the trap of poverty and underdevelopment through the adoption of various development strategies at regional, national, and continental levels. However, the results of both national and regional efforts at advancing development on the continent have been mixed. Although the importance of agglomeration and fusion of institutions have long been recognized as possible path to achieving economic development in Africa, the approach to regionalism has been unduly focused on market integration, while neglecting other dimensions such as social policy, mobility of labor, educational policy, biotechnology, regional legislation, manufacturing, innovation, and science and technology. This volume investigates the link between innovation, regional integration, and development in Africa, arguing that the immediate and long term development of Africa lies not just in the structural transformation of its economies but in the advancement of scientific and innovation capacities. The book is divided into four parts. Part I addresses the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of innovation and regional integration in Africa. Part II presents case studies which examine how regional economic institutions are fostering innovation in Africa. Part III of the book deals with sectoral issues on innovation and integrated development in Africa. Part IV sets the future research on innovation, regional integration, and development in Africa. Combining theoretical analysis and a comparative, interdisciplinary approach, this volume is appropriate for researchers and students interested in economic development, political economy, African studies, international relations, agricultural science, and geography, as well as policymakers in regional economic communities and the African Union.

​This book presents a number of key studies pertaining to the most pressing challenges of economic regional integration in West Africa. The issues of monetary coordination, foreign exchange volatility, taxation, savings and macroeconomic convergence are investigated from a regional perspective. The characteristics of West Africa’s trade policy are reviewed and assessed in comparison to that of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The extent to which regional integration can tackle the challenge of unemployment is the focus of studies on labour markets. Development of the private sector and coordination of regional cross-border transportation are examined through the lens of economic collaboration between Arab and African countries. The book provides fresh new answers to persistent development questions and sheds new light on long-held views that are either incomplete or no longer true. It also opens new perspectives on the search for sustainable avenues for Africa’s development. In this regard, it may contribute to the emergence of a new paradigm on Africa’s development process and its science-based, policy-oriented implementation.

This book examines the enduring significance of borders in Southern Africa, covering encounters between people, ideas and matter, and the new spatialities and transformations they generate in their historical, social, economic and cultural contexts. Situated within debates on borders, borderlands, sub- and regional integration, this volume examines local, grassroots and non-state actors and their cross-border economic and sociocultural encounters and contestations. Particular attention is also paid on the role they play in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region and its integration project in its multiplicity. The interdisciplinary chapters address the diverse human activities relating to cross-border economic and sociocultural encounters and contestations that are manifested through multiform and -scalar interactions between or among grassroots actors, involving engagements between grassroots actors and the state or its agencies, and/or to the broader arrangements that bear consequences of the first two upon regional integration. By bringing these different, at times contrasting, forms of interaction under a holistic analysis, this volume devises novel ways to understand the persistence and role of borders and their relation to new transnational and transcultural integrative phenomena at various levels, extending from the (nation-)state and the political to the cultural and social at the everyday level of border practices. Scholars and students of African studies, geography, economics, politics, sociology and border studies will find this book useful.