The steering committee meeting on the rationalisation of economic communities in Central Africa held in Yaounde yesterday. Economic experts as well governments in the Central African Sub-region are multiplying strategies to merge the so many economic communities in the sub-region so as to have a unique and vibrant body capable of standing the test of time and ably spearheading its socio-economic development. Cameroon that currently holds the presidency of the steering committee to pilot the rationalisation process yesterday played host to the first-ever meeting that brought together experts and Ministers of Integration in the Central Africa Sub-region.

The aim of the meeting, which was preceded by a three-day experts meeting last week, was to seek efficient ways of harmonising the economic communities. The multiplicity of economic communities in the sub-region, for example the CEMAC zone with six-member countries and the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) which includes CEMAC countries and others, oblige countries to belong and contribute to the functioning of more than one body. Something experts say is not only a waste of scarce resources and time but also a divergence of views that could be jointly tailored to give development a push.

Cameroon’s Minister of the Economy, Planning and Regional Development, Louis Paul Motaze, said while presiding at the meeting that merging the two giant economic communities was indispensable to the accelerated transformation and sustained development of the African continent. “What we have to do is to see what is the best way to go into the integration of the two economic communities to make one”, he said. The harmonisation process, Mr Motaze like other experts noted, is in line with the 1994 Abuja Treaty which, among others, seeks to promote economic, social and cultural development. It also seeks to ensure African economic integration in order to increase self-sufficiency and sustainable development and to create a framework for development, mobilisation of human and material resources. The treaty provides for the African Economic Community to set up through a gradual process, which would be achieved by coordination, harmonisation and progressive integration of the activities of existing and future regional economic communities in the continent.

Yesterday’s meeting came after that of experts which brainstormed on the possible procedures that could ensure efficiency in the harmonisation process. Merging the two economic communities, experts say, have far-reaching benefits but the steering community would have to surmount challenges like currency, language and others given that CEMAC has a peculiarity of using the French language and CFA Franc unlike ECCAS countries.