Accelerating Africa’S Integration Through Micro-Regionalism:The Case of Zambia-Malawi-Mozambique Growth Triangle and Its Impact

By Kojo B. Asiedu and Olubanke King-Akerele

This book is about accelerating Africas integration through the application of the growth triangle concept. Filled with rich experiences backed by research, this book is also a powerful account of how African countries border areas---many of which largely marginalized and clash points of conflicts---can be transformed into vibrant socio-economic security zones through local-regional development efforts. This book equally creates a necessary kind of working environment where micro-regionalism is given a significant role to play in addressing some of the protracted challenges associated with our continents larger groupings.
A valuable piece of work and absolutely required reading for all of us (politicians, academics private sector, development practitioners, NGOS)

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9781496943286

Kojo B. Asiedu

Olubanke King-Akerele, or Banke, as she is known generally, is a Li- berian and former Minister of Foreign Affairs as well as former Min- ister of Commerce and Industry of the Government of Liberia, over the period 2006-2010. Prior to her period of public service, she was engaged for some 24 years in international development at senior levels with the United Nations system, notably, UNIFEM (today’s UN Women), UNDP, UNIDO, and UNESCO. She is a graduate in econom- ics from Brandeis University, in the USA, with subsequent graduate level work at the masters’ level at Columbia University and at North- eastern University in the U.S.A. She is the author of several Articles with her most recent publication entitled “Women’s Leadership in Post-Conflic Liberia: My Journey” which documents her five years of public service in Liberia, and the challenges faced instituting reforms in that post-conflict country. Kojo Boafo Asiedu is Senior Policy Advisor in International Develop- ment with a focus on regional integration and development equity. He is a member of, and Special Advisor to the Executive Board of the Hilary Clinton- initiated African Women Empowerment Programme (AWEP) based in Lusaka, Zambia, and until recently Policy Advisor to the ZMM-GT Secretariat. Before that he served as a Regional Coor- dinator of UNDP Programme for Innovative Cooperation Among the South (PICAS), which was managed from UNDP- Zambia, and dealt with exchange of development experiences among African and Asian countries. He was previously also UNDP Technical Assistance Expert at the African Regional Centre for Technology based in Dakar, Sen- egal, where he later became Director of that Centre’s Research and Technology Consulting Services Division. More recently, Kojo was a member of AU/UN team of experts who helped create the Specific Reconstruction and Development Zone (SRDZ) in the Great Lakes Region. Kojo holds a PhD from Georg-August University, Goettin- gen, Germany, where he was also a Research Associate. Kojo is a Ghanaian and former University Senior Lecturer ,and au- thor of several peer reviewed books and policy briefs on international development. He also consults for a number of multilateral and bi- lateral development agencies and policy think tanks including UNDP, UNESCO, FAO, UNIDO, JICA, and Institute for Security Studies.

Book preview

ACCELERATING

AFRICA’S

INTEGRATION

Through Micro-regionalism:

The Case of Zambia-Malawi-Mozambique

Growth Triangle and Its Impact

Olubanke King-Akerele

Kojo Boafo Asiedu

AuthorHouse™

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©

2015 Olubanke King-Akerele & Kojo B. Asiedu. All rights reserved.

Originally published and printed in Ghana by Digibooks Ghana Ltd,Tema -Dec 2012/jan2013

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 05/30/2015

ISBN: 978-1-4969-4327-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-4328-6 (e)

Reproduction of the map of the Economic Zones in the Asian and Pacific Region in Figure 1 has been made possible through courtesy of Kelly, Michael et all (1997), WTEC Panel on Electronics Manufacturing in the Pacific Rim, Pg. 28.

Cover and layout design by Louis K. Sampson byDigibooks Ghana Ltd

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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Table of Contents

Dedication

Foreword

About the authors

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations and Acronyms

CHAPTER 1

Introduction and Context

South – South Cooperation (SSC): A Historical Perspective

The Programme for Innovative Cooperation among the South (PICAS)

CHAPTER 2

Overview

Growth Triangles/Growth Areas: Definitions,

Terms and Initiatives of Sub-Regional Nature

Growth Triangles: A Special Case of the Concept

of Economic Co-operation

Trans-Boundary Collaborations and their Relevance to

Growth Areas/Growth Triangles: Some Theoretical Debates

Schools of Thought and Policy Areas

Growth Triangles in Southeast Asia: Experience and Lessons

Differences among Various Initiatives

Growth Triangles’ Contribution to the Promotion

of Peace and Security in Asia: Lessons from Asia

CHAPTER 3

The Zambia-Malawi-Mozambique Growth Triangle (ZMM-GT)

Its Prefeasibility Study, Economic Rationale and Potential

Why a Prefeasibility Study?

Institutional and Structural Arrangements

Linkages between ZMM-GT and Other Sub-Regional Initiatives

and NEPAD

CHAPTER 4

Recent Economic Developments and Prospects

in the three Growth Triangle Countries

CHAPTER 5

ZMM-GT: A Snapshot of Achievements

and Impacts to date

CHAPTER 6

Lessons and Prospects

CHAPTER 7

Taking the Growth Triangle Concept to the Great Lakes Region

Adapting the Growth Triangle Concept for the Development of Border Zones and Human Security in the Great Lakes Region

CHAPTER 8

Proposed Adaptation of Growth Triangle/

Growth Area Concept in the Mano River Union:

Building on the Peace Dividends

CHAPTER 9

In Lieu of Conclusions

References

Appendix 1

Box

Box 1: The Interim EPAs decelerate Africa’s Integration Efforts:

Some Voices from within and outside of Africa.

Box 2: Decentralized Cooperation

Box 3: Lessons from the South

Box 4: Pushing forward the Integration Agenda

from Grassroots Level

Box 5: The Private Sector, as a force to reckon with

Box 6 Chipata-Mchinji Rail Opens

Figure

Figure 1: Economic Zones in the Asian and Pacific Region

Figure 2: Development of Trans-boundary Relationships over Time

Figure 3: Comparative GDP Growth Rates (2000-2005)

Figure 4: Proposed MRU Growth Areas

Table

Table 1: Mechanisms for Regional Cooperation

Table 2: Comparison of Rationales: Regional Integration

Arrangements (RIAs) and Growth Triangles (GTs)

Table 3: Comparative Analysis of Land Area,

Population and Population Density

Table 4a: Key Social Indicators for Zambia, Malawi

and Mozambique

Table 4b: Key Social Indicators for Zambia, Malawi

and Mozambique

Table 5a: Comparative Analysis of Resource Endowment

|and Exploitation within the ZMM-GT

Table 5b : Comparative Analysis of Resource Endowment

and Exploitation within the ZMM-GT

Table 5c : Comparative Analysis of Resource Endowment

and Exploitation within the ZMM-GT

Table 5d : Comparative Analysis of Resource Endowment

and Exploitation within the ZMM-GT

Table 6: GDP by sector (in %)

Table 7: Macroeconomic Indicators

Table 8: Macroeconomic Indicators

Table 9: GDP by sector (in %)

Table 10: Macroeconomic Indicators of Mozambique

Dedication

T o the peoples of the ZMM-GT and the leadership of the three countries of the Triangle, past and present, several of whom have gone to the great beyond. They were all believers in the initiative and did not hesitate to support it.

To the private sectors of the three countries without which the initiative would never have taken off.

Foreword

G reater African Unity has long been a cherished goal. This goal has been pursued with varying degree of determination and focus. The past 15 years or so have witnessed a renewed impetus to establish closer economic and political ties among the continent’s fifty-four countries, based on an increased appreciation of the need for regional integration and a clearer understanding of the reason for past moderate successes. Forty-five years after the OAU was launched to end colonialism and unite the peoples of Africa, the continent’s leaders inaugurated its successor, the African Union (AU) in Durban, South Africa in July 2002. While the OAU was in principle a political organization, the AU emphasizes economic integration as a route to political unity. In effect, AU inherits the OAU’s mantle of Pan-Africanism but has a broader mandate to meet the challenges of a rapidly globalizing era. Historical evidence has shown that if regional integration is to be effective in meeting such challenges, it should involve all sections of the society including civil society, with the private sector empowered to play a lead role.

Growth Triangles gained prominence in the late 1980’s in Asia, and are understood as transnational economic zones spread over geographically neighbouring countries in which differences in factor endowments of three or more countries are exploited to promote trade, investment, freer movement of people, goods and services. Growth Triangles are normally seen as a fast track approach to regional integration. Thus, against the background of the AU, Growth Triangles offer an innovative and practical opportunity for Africa, in the wake of heightened international competitiveness and the need for African economies to be competitive. An equally important feature of Growth Triangles is that the private sector is seen as the centre of the growth mechanism while public private sector partnership is essential in the entire process.

Similarly, while the concept of Growth Triangles is still evolving and somewhat unfamiliar to many development practitioners, it has huge implications not just for development but also for multilateral approaches to a wide range of pressing global problems including peace and security as well as environment. That is why some of us who have been fortunate enough to be associated the Zambia-Malawi-Mozambique Growth Triangle (ZMM-GT) have been ardent, enthusiastic yet not uncritical supporters of this concept, which we believe adds value to efforts to address Africa’s integration and peace and security issues.

As far back as October 1999, when the seeds for the establishment of the ZMM-GT were sown across our three countries, with support from United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) our political leaders and private sector including myself did not hesitate to express our individual and collective appreciation of and support to the initiative following several briefings by the then UNDP Resident Representative and UN Coordinator in Zambia, Mrs. Olubanke King-Akerele.

Two years later in 2001 at the Southern African Economic Summit in Durban, South Africa, Joaquim Chissano, former Mozambican President reaffirmed his support of the initiative and highlighted, at the plenary, the ZMM-GT as an illustration of efforts at deepening the economic integration process. The sustained and visible commitment of his Government then and those of Malawi and Zambia was and remained clear. This had been concretized by the signing of the relevant Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in Lilongwe, Malawi on 17 November 2000 and completing the rail line linking our three countries through Chipata, (Zambia), Mchinji (Malawi) and Port of Nacala (Mozambique). This is one of the hallmarks of the ZMM-GT.

Just under a decade after the concept was introduced to us in southern Africa, I am delighted to witness its development and achievements thus far. This book illustrates a development experience in Southern Africa. An example of micro-regionalism that seeks to accelerate the pace of integration among three Southern African countries, the majority of whose populations are more interested in promoting economic and human ties as well as peace and tranquillity than the lines or boundaries that separate them.

The endorsement by the Executive Secretary of SADC a few years ago proved significant. In this regard, I refer to the response to the letter to the Executive Secretary regarding the subject of Growth Triangles in Southern Africa. He stated among others:

This is to confirm that the SADC Secretariat is fully committed to this concept. This is because it is consistent with our own concepts of development under our own proposed Regional Economic Planning Activities.

Of particular importance is also the fact that my late President Levy Mwanawasa, of Zambia had, in 2002, equally endorsed this initiative for the countries of Zambia. Malawi and Mozambique, as evident by the following:

It is necessary to underscore that in our search for answers to the development challenges, the more and more urgent, the peoples of the two countries (Zambia and Malawi) have gone ahead and established a growth triangle Zambia-Malawi—Mozambique aimed at expanding exchanges and investments in the border provinces and regions thereby complementing the regional integration efforts. Zambia in this respect will make sure that the populations living along the border between Zambia and Malawi benefit from the programmes put in place with this conceptual framework.

It is therefore befitting that this book is being dedicated to all those, late or alive, who contributed to this development experience with which I am proud to be associated.

It is with much satisfaction that I learnt that the concept is being adapted to the Great Lakes Region and the Mano River Union based on the experience gained with the ZMM-GT. It is my fervent hope that it will also find applicability in other parts of Africa - all within the framework of our regional economic communities and, consistent with NEPAD principles, underpinning and contributing to strong foundation for the African Union.

The chapters of the book are crafted with thoroughness which is manifested in the clear and factual message of the book. More importantly, the authors, Banke and Kojo give a blow-by-blow account of a development experience that was led by Banke and ably coordinated by her Lieutenant Kojo. Both had a well-developed vision and they were not afraid to express their opinions even when there were contrary to those of their peers, even when they were not in conformity with the conventional way of doing development. This book has a refreshing approach between modesty and self-confidence and I am exceedingly pleased to learn that the secretariat that was put in place to drive the ZMM-GT some years back is being re-engineered both structurally and locationally in order to meet the ever changing challenges. This is indeed good news for Africa. It is only a fool who does not build on what he came to inherit, says the old adage.

It is my sincere hope that both public and private sector as well as the academia and civil society in Africa will find this book thought-provoking in terms of rethinking and reorienting public policy-making to treat our countries’ border areas and their populations as assets and huge opportunities for economic cooperation and social cohesion rather than liabilities and insurmountable, intractable challenges.

Wila D. Mung’omba *

Barrister at Law; Advocate of the High Court and Supreme Court of Zambia, Former President of the African Development Bank

Lusaka, Zambia

*Died in November 2013 in South Africa

About the authors

OLUBANKE KING-AKERELE

Olubanke King-Akerele, or Banke, as she is known generally, is a Liberian and former Minister of Foreign Affairs as well as former Minister of Commerce and Industry of the Government of Liberia, over the period 2006-2010. Prior to her period of public service, she was engaged for some 24 years in international development at senior levels with the United Nations system, notably, UNIFEM (today’s UN Women), UNDP, UNIDO, and UNESCO. She is a graduate in economics from Brandeis University, in the USA, with subsequent graduate level work at the masters’ level at Columbia University and at Northeastern University in the U.S.A.

She is the author of several Articles and Books, namely Women’s Leadership in Post-Conflict Liberia: My Journey by Digibooks (Ghana), which documents her five years of public service in Liberia, and the challenges faced instituting reforms in that post-conflict country.

Her latest publication, entitled The Growing of Africa’s Emergent Leadership with Foreword by Dr. Kenneth Kaunda, fist President of Zambia, was launched in Lusaka, Zambia in February 2014, published by Club Millennium, Paris, France.

KOJO BOAFO ASIEDU

Kojo Boafo Asiedu is Senior Policy Advisor in International Development with a focus on regional integration and development equity. He is a member of, and Special Advisor to the Executive Board of the Hilary Clinton- initiated African Women Empowerment Programme (AWEP) based in Lusaka, Zambia, and until recently Policy Advisor to the ZMM-GT Secretariat. Before that he served as a Regional Coordinator of UNDP Programme for Innovative Cooperation Among the South (PICAS), which was managed from UNDP- Zambia, and dealt with exchange of development experiences among African and Asian countries. He was previously also UNDP Technical Assistance Expert at the African Regional Centre for Technology based in Dakar, Senegal, where he later became Director of that Centre’s Research and Technology Consulting Services Division. More recently, Kojo was a member of AU/UN team of experts who helped create the Specific Reconstruction and Development Zone (SRDZ) in the Great Lakes Region. Kojo holds a PhD from Georg-August University, Goettingen, Germany, where he was also a Research Associate.

Kojo is a Ghanaian and former University Senior Lecturer ,and author of several peer reviewed books and policy briefs on international development. He also consults for a number of multilateral and bilateral development agencies and policy think tanks including UNDP, UNESCO, FAO, UNIDO, JICA, and Institute for Security Studies.

Acknowledgements

I n many respects, the world is becoming increasingly borderless. Migratory workers and expanding transnational corporations have internationalised many factors of production and distribution. Access to the internet and cellular phones have made instantaneous communication possible from almost any corner of the globe to any other.

Climate change, the HIV/AIDS epidemic and new health scares like swine flu (H1N1 Virus) and Avian Flu as well as violent conflicts pay no attention to national and geographic dividing lines.

Similarly, the more recent global financial crisis originating in the United States of America is having a negative spin-off on health and education funding, diaspora remittances and capital flows in several African countries where living on bank credit is virtually unknown.

All of the above is a clear testament of globalisation at work. Globalisation in some way may provide an opportunity for Africa to pursue an economic development strategy that promotes closer cooperation and deeper integration among neighbouring countries in terms of trade, investment and peace and security.

It is true that little has accrued to Africa under globalisation, but the former as a process has created hierarchies of production, and has produced regionalism as a structural reality in production.

Regionalism including micro-regionalism has become progressively more important in the developing world over the past half century. Today, it provides some of the most visible, easily recognised and extensive evidence of South-South Cooperation at work. Growth Triangles or Growth Areas are concrete examples of micro-regionalism. The basic underlying concept for most Growth Triangles is that economic complementarities among geographically