Regional Integration in Africa: 2024 IIAG overview

13 March, 2025

On 12-18 March 2025, the 57th session of the Economic Commission for Africa: Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development will be held in Addis Ababa. The session will explore the topic of “Advancing the implementation of the Agreement Establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area: proposing transformative strategic actions.” It is also expected to address the issues of digitalisation, technology, food security and energy transformation.

Based on this, we can look to the Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG) to unpack some of the results for the Regional Integration indicator across the 2024 IIAG to highlight how Africa is progressing on its objectives to improve regional trade and travel over the last decade.

Results from the 2024 Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG)

Africa: Regional Integration Score (2014-2023)

Over the 2014-2023 period, the Regional Integration indicator improved by +4.4 points. This places it as the 21st most improved indicator out of the 52 other indicators which also improved at the Africa average level.
12 countries reported double-digit improvements over the decade. Led by Ethiopia (+33.8), Benin (+24.7) and Ghana (+20.2). All three of these countries were classified as being on a Slowing Improvement trend classification.

Regional Integration sub-indicators: 10-year change (2014-2023)

Progress at the indicator level was driven by improvements in the underlying sub-indicators of Regional Travel Integration (+7.6) and Government Development of Regional Integration (+7.1). Concerningly, the sub-indicator, Regional Trade Integration declined by -1.2 points. This highlights the importance of the UNECA session on the AfCFTA which will be essential in improving these scores going forward.

Regional Integration is recovering after experiencing a small dent in 2021

After seeing a small COVID-19-induced dent in Regional Integration in 2021, the continental average is slowly improving again. Only three countries are seeing double-digit deteriorations for this indicator (Kenya, Mali and Uganda) which are offset by 50 countries which reported positive changes.

African countries: Regional Integration, 10-year change (2014-2023)

Except for the EAC, whose small overall deterioration is driven by massive declines in Uganda and Kenya (-17.8 and -16.6, respectively), African RECs have seen improvements in Regional Integration over the last decade, spearheaded by ECOWAS (+11.0, excluding currently suspended or withdrawn countries). In 2023, four RECs performed above the African average of 43.4 (ECOWAS, SADC, EAC and COMESA), while four RECs registered scores below (CEN-SAD, IGAD, ECCAS and UMA).