Mini-thread: About to leave Abuja and head for Lagos after PM meeting with President Buhari. This trip is all about post-Brexit trade-but one irony is though we are leaving the EU (thereby fragmenting an economic bloc) much of Africa is moving in the other direction...(1)
For example, Nigeria is a member of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). They set a common tariff and aim to reduce barriers to trade internally. Their aim is to create a common market and then something which looks a lot like the EEA (2)
There are even proposals to create a single currency and there a sort of freedom of movement. There are regional equivalents of ECOWAS in Southern Africa and in the east, all at different levels of development. (3)
Then the African Union has the aim of creating a common customs area (or union) across the whole continent. The irony is as Britain is going it alone, hoping to strike more bespoke deals in emerging markets, the players it has to deal with are integrating.
That will complicate and protract trade negotiations. Britain also may find itself in a peculiar situation- it may be the weaker negotiating partner alongside countries where it has long been the more powerful force.
There are opportunities for UK to strike deals in emerg markets like Africa-but the way states in those markets interact with each other is changing. We sometimes talk as if regional economic/pol integration has only happened in EU. That’s not true-and UK has to be ready for it.
