United we stand...

"People often say when Africans argue for an integrated national African economy, they are self-indulgent entertaining nothing but a futile illusion. They claim that to argue that Africa must unite economically, ‘knowledge-ically’, politically, and ’society-ically’ is to day-dream and to give in to fantasy. They assert that Africa does not exist in anything, form or shape other than as a geographical accident.

Of course, they would hardly say this of the USA, for example, where 'the tribes of the whole world’, and people have united under one constitution and national flag...

It is no exaggeration to state that African political and economic arrangements today are characterized by pervasive internal and schizophrenic disconnections, mismatches, fragmentations and external dependence. Nearly 70 % of Africa’s overall population exist in subsistence and primary resource and agrarian condition. Where a region has the overwhelming portion of its production as agricultural, that region invariably remains vulnerable even in being able to feed itself.
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Africa’s current pattern of insertion in the world economy comes at the cost of fragmenting the African economic, knowledge and political space. " (Thanks Marcy)

And while we're on the topic, here's the latest on Arab integration: a new UN-ESCWA study reports that we're losing ground to Globalization. The Arab World has attracted in 2006 $62 billions in investments, of which only $4.8 billions were from other Arab countries.