Регионална Икономическа Интеграция В Африка (Дисертация) [Regional Economic Integration in Africa (Ph.D. Thesis, full text)]

The dissertation is dedicated to specific processes of regional economic integration in Africa. The main goal is to assess systematically the development and potential of regional economic communities in Africa through: - systematization of factors that influence the motivation of developing countries to participate in integration, as well as its specific impact on them; - laying out the possibilities and challenges in the processes of regional economic integration in Africa through an analysis of the direction and structure of international trade of African countries and regional blocks; - assessing the different channels of impact of the EU on the integration processes in Africa. The Introduction sets out the importance of the topic and the goal of the paper and outlines the structure, methodology and the limitations of the research. The first chapter discusses the definition and typology of economic integration, traditional and new theories on its effects (static and dynamic analysis) while the main focus is on the determinants of integration among developing countries. The second chapter presents the development of integration processes in Africa, the economy of regional economic communities, the structure and dynamics of their international trade as well as the results and challenges to their integration. The third chapter systemizes the different channels of impact of the EU on the integration processes in Africa paying special attention on the new framework of trade relations – the Economic partnership agreements. The Conclusion summarizes the general conclusions of the research answering the imposed research hypotheses: - first, that traditional and new integration theories with the drawn in them effects and benefits of integration processes are weakly or not at all applicable to developing countries and in particular to regional economic integration in Africa; - second, that the impact of the EU on regional economic integration in Africa is twofold – it has the potential to give impetus to its development but on the other hand it poses some challenges to the already complicated integration processes.