Recognizing the valuable technical capacity of ECA, African governments have always relied on ECA to formulate the various regional policies and frameworks for concerted development of Africa. These include the following:
Lagos Plan of Action and Final Act of Lagos (LPA and FAL) - 1980
The tenth ordinary session of the OAU Assembly of Heads of State and Government held in Addis Ababa in May 1973 adopted the African Declaration on Cooperation, Development and Economic Independence, which underlined the importance attached by African countries to collective self-reliance and independence and provided policy guidelines for regional, subregional and sectoral cooperation.
Subsequently, at the request of the United Nations General Assembly, ECA, in 1976, prepared the report Preliminary Assessment of the Long-term Development Trends and Prospects in Africa, which showed substantial declines
Community Members Specified
(MRU) Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone Multisectoral
integration Some training
South Africa, Swaziland Customs union Customs union achieved, as well as
52 ECA and Africa: Fifty Years of Partnership
in the growth of African economies. The Commission therefore embarked on what ECA Executive Secretary, Adebayo Adedeji, termed “the search for alternative development models.”4 The process took the centre stage in ECA activities for more than ten years from the mid-1970s and gave rise to many proposals.
The first strategy developed in this regard was The Revised Framework of Principles for the Implementation of the New International Economic Order in Africa5. It was developed specifically as an input into the International Development Strategy for the Third United Nations Development Decade of the 1980s and was predicated on four key objectives: promotion of reliance; self-sustainable growth; eradication of unemployment and poverty; and fair and just distribution of income and benefits of economic development among the people.
The Revised Framework was submitted to, and endorsed by, the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the OAU in June 1977.
Working in cooperation with the OAU, ECA refined the Revised Framework, which was subsequently submitted to the July 1979 OAU Extraordinary Summit as the Development
4 Adebayo Adedeji, The ECA: Forging a Future for Africa in Unity and Diversity in Development Ideas. Perspectives from Regional Commissions. UN Intellectual History Project Series.
5 E/CN.14/ECO/90/Rev.3
Strategy for Africa for the Third United Nations Development Decade. It adopted as the Monrovia Strategy for the Economic Development of Africa by the Assembly which also adopted the accompanying Monrovia Declaration of Commitment providing guidelines to member States as well as concrete measures to be taken at the national, subregional and continental levels for the creation of a “New Economic Order” for Africa based on the principles of self-sufficiency and economic and social development.
Accordingly, the Assembly directed the Secretary-General of the OAU, in cooperation with the Executive Secretary of ECA, to develop a plan of action for the implementation of the Strategy6 and make the necessary arrangements for the proposed extraordinary session.
Thus, the ECA Conference of Ministers prepared the draft plan of action at its meeting in Addis Ababa in early April 1980. It was adopted by the Second Extraordinary Session of the OAU Assembly convened in Lagos, Nigeria, later in April 1980, as the Lagos Plan of Action (LPA) and the Final Act of Lagos (FAL).
Both the LPA and the FAL laid down the principles, objectives, stages, measures and priorities for achieving individual autonomy and collective self-sufficiency as well as for establishing the AEC, to ensure the economic,
6 ECA, LPA, Lagos, Nigeria, April 1980
Supporting and Promoting Regional Cooperation and Integration 53
cultural and social integration of Africa. With the LPA and the FAL, Africa adopted a development pattern based on the principle of individual autonomy and collective self-sufficiency, The Revised Framework thus laid the intellectual foundation for these important regional programmes aimed at transforming the structure of African economies.
The LPA was predicated on self-reliance, self-sustained development and economic cooperation and integration.
It aimed to address structural problems in African economies arising from structural weaknesses, limited human resources and a constraining external economic environment. It focused on the key sectors of food and agriculture, industry, science and technology, natural resources, trade and finance, transport and communications, human resources development and technical cooperation.
Accordingly, the LPA sought to promote three basic objectives: developing the domestic market and reducing reliance on foreign markets; developing indigenous factor inputs; and fostering improved regional integration in order to create the necessary economies of scale for the first two objectives. These objectives were underpinned by a desire for value-added and productivity increase, for overcoming the foreign exchange constraints and
balance-of-payments problems that African countries faced, and for providing the skills and knowledge for the production and management required for transforming African economies.
The main context of the LPA includes:
(a) Strengthening of subregional and regional cooperation;
Many landmark development initiatives emerged out of ECA Caucus rooms.
(b) Promotion of economic and technical cooperation with developing countries;
(c) Strengthening of intra-regional cooperation, particularly intra-regional trade;
(d) Promotion of sustainable economic development of member States; and
(e) Integration of the economies of member States while preserving the social and cultural values of each.
The LPA and the accompanying FAL clearly specified the commitment of Africa’s leaders to economic integration of the continent, an idea that ECA had been promoting for years. In addition to calling for the expansion of intra-African trade, these documents set out the vision for the creation of an African Common Market to be followed by an African Economic Community, the building blocks
of which were to be the five main subregional economic communities. In addition to the usual benefits of integration, a key consideration for African countries was to use the economic community to overcome the limitations of their small and fragmented economies, with emphasis on improving transport and communications infrastructure as a key requirement for the continent’s industrialization.
Even though the LPA represented a clear expression of Africa’s vision as well as ownership of its long-term development aspirations, the World Bank, at about the same time, launched and aggressively promoted, its own publication, the Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa:
an Agenda for Action. The Agenda pointed to and conveyed a distinctly separate political message when it was issued barely one year after the adoption of the LPA, a message that was markedly different from the African position.
As a result, African academics and governments alike rejected claims by the World Bank that this publication built on the intentions of the LPA.
In direct contrast to the LPA’s message of self-reliance and self-sustaining development, the World Bank’s Agenda emphasized the benefits of external trade, including the use of agricultural exports as a motor for economic development. Moreover, it saw Africa’s trade and 1980-1985: Preparation and development of the Draft Treaty establishing the
African Economic Community; creation of the necessary national and subregional institutions; mobilization of financial and human resources; awareness-building campaign among African people through seminars, symposia and dissemination of the LPA.
1980-1990: Strengthening of the existing regional economic communities and creation of others where they did not exist, so as to cover the five OAU subregions;
promotion of coordination and harmonization of activities and programmes of the existing and future RECs with the view of gradually establishing the African Common Market, as a prelude to the establishment of the African Economic Community.
1980–2000: Laying the foundation for the creation of the African Economic Community, through integration of sectors and harmonization of the development strategies, policies and plans of member States.
Source: ECA, LPA, Lagos, Nigeria, April 1980
Box 4.1: Timeframe and Stages for the Implementation of the LPA and FAL
Supporting and Promoting Regional Cooperation and Integration 55
exchange rate policies as being responsible for the poor performance of this sector and inimical to its future development. Irrespective of the motives of the Agenda, it was seen by many in Africa as an attempt by Western interests working through the World Bank to keep Africa in its colonial role as supplier of raw materials and natural resources for the maintenance of their industrial power. In reaction, the ECA Conference of Ministers described the
“Agenda” as a fundamental contradiction to the political, economic and social aspirations of Africa.
In preparation for the implementation of its proposal, which was later adopted as the LPA and FAL, ECA transformed its subregional offices unto the MULPOCs in 1977-1978 as its main instruments for operational activities. Furthermore, ECA proposed, and the UNGA endorsed, a special programme for development of transport and communications in Africa, UNTACDA, for the decade 1978-1988.