Integration in Africa can only be a long-term attempt to solve economic problems, because of its high absorption of scarce and therefore expensive factors of production. In contrast to integration, cooperation seems to be a more useful approach to tackle the urgent employment and growth problems.

A new catch-phrase in development policy, "political conditionality", has rapidly established itself in recent times. Increasing numbers of Western politicians now seek to attach strings to development aid by requiring recipient countries to comply with certain political conditions. These...

No observer of the African economic scene could fail to be struck by the multiplicity of economic co-operation groupings. While these represent simple institutional structures that are within the administrative capacity of the African States and offer useful training for more sophisticated...

The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has a long history of intellectual independence. This article details how Western countries tried to marginalise the organisation and its work – which is often critical of Western powers – during the 2012 UNCTAD conference. While developing...