Africa. Most reflect the traces of the colonial past or are a simple continuation or revival of the old metropolitan' scheme of things in Africa; they are mainly concerned with the
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liberalization of trade and not with increasing production and the number of exports or en hancing development; they also do not have target dates for achieving their objectives.
Mr. Chairman,
Allow me to say a few words on African regional and subregional groupings.
Thirty-six regional and subregional groupings and institutions have mushroomed under the protective umbrella of ECA, outside it, or were set up even before its establishment.
But whereas ECA's real and natural objectives were the establishment of regional groupings fostering and aiming at the most essential and most badly needed targets of increasing food and energy production, laying down communication and transport infrastructure, the ac cumulation and pooling of resources and investment capital and of foreign investment, in creasing intraregional and intra-African trade, mining and industry through the expansion or creation of sufficiently and economically viable markets of production and consumption, unfortunately many of the mushrooming and proliferating regional or subregional African groupings were simply content with the removal of customs or trade barriers or the liberalization of trade. These are worthy goals in themselves; but in an economy as backward and as poor as Africa's, those marginal goals are inadequate and fall short of the most badly needed inmediate targets of self-sufficiency, production increases, fairer distribu tion and the enhancement of exports. They do not attain the goals of widening African markets, increasing food, energy and industrial productivity, accumulating investment funds and increasing intra-regional African trade.
Many of those trade areas have not succeeded in uplifting their aggregate of in traregional trade beyond 2 or 3 per cent of the conglomerate trade of the members of the region or subregion. Intraregional African trade has not exceeded 4 or 5 per cent. The trade of the whole of the African continent is still geared towards the outside world.
Seventy-five per cent of Africa's trade goes to the OECD countries alone. And this despite the efforts of ECA and the proliferation of so-called African regional or subregional group ings.
In fact, these groupings should be established on legitimate scientific and economic grounds such as the community of natural resources, the possible complementarity of economic and social structures, the sharing of water resources from lake basins and rivers, the common exploitation of subterranean resources, in other words, essentials for a poten tial common market or markets with viable entities and increased possibilities for the inter change of more productivity, of more export capabilities, of wider market consumption capabilities; above all, the groupings ought to be set up on the basis of good neighbourli-ness and similarity of cultural and political approaches. There is an urgent need to review all existing regional and subregional groupings with a view to restructuring African economies for greater organic balance.
We see ECA as the new catalyst, and as the sponsor and advocate of a revision of some of those hackneyed arbitrary non-economic and non-social divisions.
There may be groupings around lake basins or river basins or mineral resources or other national resources which transcend by far the theoretical conglomeration of 20 or more East, Central or West African States; they also transcend by far the lumping together of an economic unit of five North Saharan African States which may share language and common culture but very little else economically or politically. Here of course I am not referring to the great Maghreb scheme which is different from the theoretical lumping together of five North African States. A greater endogenization and internationalization in the African economy is becoming a precondition for and synonymous with development. Domestic mar kets must be widened and mainly for export promotion.
This requires enormous capital accumulation and investments, regional co-operation in
water resources development, productivity and flexibility in manpower movement. It needs simultaneous growth in the manufacturing, transport and export sectors. Regional co-opera tion should not be geared to trade expansion alone; it should also aim at easier movement, greater productivity and self sufficiency. The post-independence generations of regional heterogeneous groupings point to the need for a gradual homogenization of existing viable ones, or the dissolution of existing heterogeneous blocs. The relevant theory for an African common market should therefore be that of development and not trade.
Africa has been fragmented into a number of subregions according to old external politi cal and economic interests and control. There was and there still is little interconnection among those various subregions, with perhaps the exception of East and Central Africa. It is true that new groupings emanating mostly from pan-Africanist integration objectives have recently emerged. However, changes in the arbitrary old colonial patterns are still mar ginal. The essence of the inherited continent with wide integration structures covering North, South, East, West and Central Africa still dominates. These organizations do not constitute a hierarchy. They all run parallel to one another. Except for OAU and ECA, there is no major African organization endowed with continent-wide competence especially in the planning, co-ordination and implementation of African integrationist policies. There are no formal horizontal or vertical economic relationships within the existing mesh or net work of so many African regional or subregional groupings. Many even have conflicting economic or political, interests.
If the above-mentioned horizontal compartmentalization or lumping together of five North African States made some cultural or linguistic sense but not much economic sense, on the contrary, the vertical compartmentalization of some nine East African States has al ways made historical reality and geographical sense and does make much economic and political sense, built on the eternal factor of the Nile.
This is a scientific truth recognized already by many international economic and social organizations. This is a vertical almost continent-wide embryo organization already en dowed with the beginnings of a central authority charged with planning, co-ordination and implementation.
In his book "The River War" published in 1902, Sir Winston Churchill compared the Nile system to a long palm tree, with its roots in Lake Victoria and the surrounding regions where the river Nile found its sources, its stem in the long White Nile in the Sudan, and its fruit-bearing branches in the Delta region in Egypt.
Indeed, if one looks at the map of the Nile, one will readily see the aptness of the simile. Winston Churchill went on to say that the branches would bear no fruit and would wither away if they were cut off from their roots and the stem. The latter, in turn, would remain unfulfilled and fruitless if the branches were cut off from them.
Egypt is physically and organically tied to Central and East Africa. Whereas the great African desert constitutes or constituted a physical barrier between North Africa on the one hand and Black Africa down beneath on the other hand, no such barrier existed between Egypt, the Sudan and African Territories around Lake Victoria, Lake Nyasa and its tributaries. The contrary was true. The Nile was always there, a bridge between the north ern and southern parts of the great Nile system.
It helped seal together the destinies of Egypt and Central and East Africa for over five thousand years. It has helped fuse the cultures, civilizations and races of Egypt, the Nubia, the Sudan and Ethiopia. Thus Egypt became, still is and will always remain, as African as any African can claim to be.
To date, the nine Nile basin countries, that is the beneficiaries of the Nile—Egypt, the Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zaire, Rwanda and Burundi — have just begun to realize the importance of coming into close co-operation for the maximum utiliza-142
tion of the Nile, to benefit from and distribute its waters fairly, and improve its administra tion. Much more needs to be done, but the trail has been blazed and landmarks have been set to achieve this most worthy goal. Hopefully with the help of ECA, this can be done.
All beneficiaries have started holding technical meetings at the experts level to study and find common answers to the problems of managing the mighty river.
A long-standing tradition of co-operation between Egypt and the Sudan on the one hand and other Nile beneficiaries on the other has enabled Egyptian engineers to participate in the building of Nile dams,irrigation works from Uganda down to the Sudan. Egyptian en gineering task forces are stationed in the Sudan, up to the Owen Falls and Lake Victoria.
Together with their Sudanese counterparts, they are now engaged in digging the huge Jongli Canal in the Sudd region in Southern Sudan. A Permanent Joint Technical Commission has already been established between Egyptian and Sudanese irrigation engineers. AH the nine riparian States have held meetings to discuss hydrometeorological surveys of the Nile, and discussed among other things the possibility of establishing a Nine States Nile Basin Com mittee with wider mandates and possibilities.
This is only a beginning. But it is an example of how the nine riparian States have come to realize the importance of their community, of their interdependence and the inevitability of more and closer co-operation in the administration of the great River Nile which unites them as well as in other economic fields.
This oneness of history,cultural background and present day interests has led the Sudanese and Egyptian Governments to lay down together the institutional foundations for a more thorough and better-organized "complementarity" or Takamul, centrally planned and implemented.
This was started by a decision of the two Houses of Parliament — the Sudanese and Egyptian Peoples' Assemblies — meeting together a few years ago. They decided that the Sudan and Egypt, already tied together by historical, ethnic and other bonds of fraternity, had so many continuing common interests which imposed upon both Governments the need for much closer organic co-operation and the need to plan ahead for their commonness of interests.
Thus the stage was set, politically and constitutionally, for the work of the technicians.
This is going ahead at various Committee levels.
It would thus appear that the creation of a Joint Egyptian-Sudanese Commission, en dowed with an extensive mandate, was in fact the first codified concrete step in the joint hydraulic co-operation of the two countries in modern times. It also constituted their joint decision to move ahead in the direction of a comprehensive co-operation among all the riparian States of the Nile. It may be recalled that the Egypto-Sudanese agreement en courages the importance of the Joint Commission reaching agreement with the other riparian States in research and the study or execution of other joint projects.