Countries on the continent are never short of declarations and protocols announced or signed with fanfare at the African Union summits.

Over the past two months alone, I have attended a number of conferences discussing the protocols on the free movement of people, labour, goods, capital and services within the continent’s regional economic communities (RECs).

The African Union recognises eight RECs: The Arab Maghreb Union, the Community of Sahel-Saharan States, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, the East African Community, the Economic Community of Central African States, the Economic Community of West African States, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development and the Southern African Development Community.

As I study the free movement protocols, five questions have preoccupied my mind, answers to which demand future research.

First, was the regional integration idea a false start in Africa? Second, is it analogous to putting the cart before the horse? Third, was it conceived in a Eurocentric fashion?

Fourth, is it elitist and blatantly snobbish as an agenda of the summit rather than of the general populace? Finally, are the RECs really working systematically to coalesce into the African Economic Community, slated by the Abuja Treaty of 1991 to emerge 34 years down the line?

Although each of these questions deserves a separate analysis, I offer some answers as food for thought for proponents of regional integration, of which I am one.

1. A false start in Africa

Professor Rene Dumont’s False Start in Africa (1966), though confined to the newly independent Francophone West African countries, advanced a thesis that some reviewers have dismissed as paranoid and lacking in authoritative research.

These African countries advocated socialism on rather flimsy grounds, in line with the euphoria surrounding independence when every newly Independent country espoused “African socialism” — a woolly little understood concept by most of the society.

There seemed to be a hurry to set up RECs before adequate research was undertaken to understand the facts on the ground and how they would be factored into regional integration. To this day, the vast majority of citizens hardly know anything about regional integration, not least the RECs that are meant to serve them.

2. Putting the cart before the horse

The way the RECs emerged was analogous to putting the cart before the horse, in which case the cart would never move. It is unclear what type of movements the RECs were meant to free when both voluntary and involuntary movements (including IDPs and refugees, human trafficking and migrant smuggling) are rampant, but have been ignored in most protocols.

A close scrutiny of RECs suggests that the free movement of people is a vague concept as they are not identified in accordance with the typical movements they engage in.

For instance, women traders ply across common borders; human traffickers and migrant smugglers thrive; some IDPs keep suffering in their motherlands and refugees cross borders or travel farther in search of refuge that is sometimes elusive. Most of these involuntary migrants never feature in the free movement protocols, ostensibly because their problems concern institutions other than RECs.

In any case, the idea of “free movement of persons” derives logically from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, which, in Article 13, states that anyone is free to leave his/her country of birth for another country and be accorded the kind of treatment that their hosts enjoy; and while it provides for emigration, it does not guarantee the right of an immigrant to enter another country.

Thus, the RECs echo the long-cherished rights but fall short of recognising their limitations.

3. Eurocentric inclination

African RECs are modelled along the architecture of the European Union, which, to say the least, can only compare with a pan-African model of regional integration — the envisioned African Economic Community (AEC). African RECs ought to appreciate that a lot of thinking went into the formation of the EU.

Its evolution can be traced back to the European Coal and Steel and Community (ECSC) of the 1950s. The ECSC Treaty was signed in Paris in 1951 and brought France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries together in a community with the aim of facilitating the free movement of coal and steel as well as free access to sources of production and to institute respect for competition rules and price transparency.

It was created in the aftermath of the Second World War when it became necessary to reconstruct the economy of the European continent and ensure durable peace.

Unsurprisingly, the ECSC member states readily welcomed more countries to form the EU, years after the Treaty of Rome created the European Economic Community in 1957.

A cardinal feature of the EU regional policy was to transfer huge sums of money and create jobs and infrastructure in poorer areas, thereby uplifting the status of the latter. These ideals are unknown in the African RECs.

East Africa boasts of the origins of regional integration, traceable to the imperialist governors’ East Africa High Commission of 1948-1961. Other African sub-regions or sub-regional webs plunged into the regional integration agenda without any common background.

It is inconceivable that RECs will operate well where the member states are a mix of democracies and military regimes; where they are perched at different levels of development, where border disputes persist and where they were torn apart during the Cold War, from which some of them are yet to recover.

While the AU member states should rightfully emulate the EU, they should realise that it is a wider European outfit, not a sub-regional one like all our RECs are. The AU member states should look to the AEC to draw lessons from the EU. Unlike the EU where membership is critically examined before approval, the AU is an entity that African states join by virtue of geopolitics.

4. Elitist club of the summit neglecting concerns of the populace

African RECs are undoubtedly elitist. Once the foreign ministers prepare the agenda for the AU Summit, all is well for the Heads of State and Government to append their signatures to the REC protocols with much fanfare.

The national leaders never bother to find out if citizens know about the protocols, what the free movement protocol, for example, means, requires and its implications for the immigrants and their hosts. Is it any wonder that overt xenophobia has been rampant in South Africa?

It is time all RECs commissioned research on citizens’ perceptions of, attitudes toward and practices around RECs, including the fears and aspirations pertaining to free movement of persons.

After all, most RECs consist of countries whose borders were arbitrarily drawn up when the metropolitan powers colonised Africa; the porous, unpoliced and unpoliceable borders cut across the same ethnic groups pigeonholed in different sovereign states. That is the kind of research that would save the AEC the risks of toeing the lines of the current RECs.

5. African RECs are at different stages of regional integration

African RECs are at different rungs of regional integration that dictate the nature and scope of their activities. Theoretically, a regional integration entity transitions from a free trade area to a Customs union, to a common market, to a monetary union and to a political union.

The EAC is the most advanced, being in the third stage of transition. It is working on the monetary union and fast-tracking a political federation. To say the least, the going will be pretty rough for the last two stages. The implementation calendar of the EAC integration process suggests that everything is lagging behind.

Even the celebrated success in Ecowas is but misplaced as the “visa free entry” applies more to some states than to others, given the political volatility of the region. Other RECs talk much less about free movement than free trade which, nonetheless, necessitates the movement of traders.

Free movement of persons and indeed of factors of production must be encouraged throughout Africa. Perhaps individual RECs should spend less time trying to make the free movement of persons protocols work. Rather, their experiences in when it does and does not work should inform the AU as it moves systematically towards establishing the AEC, thereby enabling Africans to move freely within the continent.

John Oucho is a professor at the Population Studies and Research Institute, University of Nairobi and Founder & Executive Director of the African Migration and Development Policy Centre based in Nairobi.