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Roadmap for Regional Integration within the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) under the NEPAD Framework

The Central African Economic and Monetary Community, more frequently and generally referred to as the CEMAC, from its French acronym; Communaute Economique et Monetaire des Etats de l’Afrique Centrale, has been striving for many years to institute fully functional and mutually beneficial economic reforms that should facilitate trade and other forms of economic cooperation among member states. This has been the structure’s main focus from inception as its principal objectives at creation in 1999. In sum, it has been to converge with the goal of monitoring and controlling national economic policies, coordinating sectoral reforms, and to progressively create a common market. The challenges that prevent the community from marginally or significantly achieving any of the above objectives of the community are diverse. The Member countries jointly have a population of about 40 million inhabitants who use a common currency, and have built a number of institutions in a bid to foster regional integration but there seem to be a number of political, economic, socio-cultural, administrative factors, and more dynamics that inhibit genuine cooperation to the detriment of a progressive itinerary to a common market. Identifying these inhibitive factors through the scrutiny of documented policies, the collection of data from local and multinational businesses in the sub region, consulting World Bank, IMF, and African Development Bank reports, perusing scholarly publications, and observing stake dynamics to suggest a way forward, is the intent of this research. This paper seeks to demonstrate that abandoning the integration efforts does not constitute an option for the reason that there are diverse chances for improvement as the way forward. The first part of the paper shows a glimpse of the current CEMAC economic and political situation, with the need for an effective integration. The paper demonstrates in its second part the role that the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) can play in assisting the CEMAC region in achieving its objectives, and the last part makes recommendations for a roadmap for an effective integration within the central Regional Economic Community.