Daniel C. Bach; Regionalisation in Africa: Integration & Disintegration (Oxford: James Currey, 1999) ISBN 0852558260. 235 pp.

This is a timely book concerning the processes which have been affecting the determined and imaginative, though so far weak, pursuit for effective economic co-operation between African countries. Economic co-operation is a hugely challenging task. It demands political wisdom and strong conviction, two principles which seem to have faded away from the African political scene. While Daniel C. Bach’s book cannot resolve this, it brings new insight into the complexity of the problem, it’s seemingly detachment from the standard and accepted, but also the forces inside Africa which have taken up their own course of overcoming it. The book’s major asset is that, unlike most literature, it shifts its focus from the official and well-commented aspects of integration to what is becoming increasingly decisive form of inter-African exchange of goods and people but realised away from official statistics, annals, and reports. Indeed, it has taken one step forward to show the world where and how Africa really exists. Personal trade networks keep alive states which otherwise have lost all major features of statehood. Manufactured goods (clothes, jewellery, cars, computers, pharmaceuticals etc.) are imported in exchange for African products which find their way to a demanding market in Europe and elsewhere. Risks, sometimes high, are minimised because the system counts on the “good-will” of state-officials who view it not just as an extra-opportunity of income but also a buffer which helps to keep social tension low. Arbitrary nature of African borders, uneven distribution of its population and huge distance between major cities/trade-centres and the hinterland had all contributed to the spread of this „illegal" circuit of goods undermining a strongly outward-oriented and mutually exclusive regional integration structures. As the authors point out large groups of the population-at times whole states-awe their survival to these semi-clandestine transactions across boundaries. This form of “trans-state” regional integration has become increasingly an obstacle to institution building efforts hammering yet another death-nail on a declining post-colonial state order. Regionalisation processes in Africa are closely linked with changing patterns of globalisation, where Africa is increasingly incorporated on a subordinate basis into the emerging global order. This, together with the weakening (declining, shrinking) of the African state have contributed to current attitudes towards the use of public office for personal enrichment, illicit support for specific international patterns of crime, notably in the drug trade. The book's choice not to take side, but give varying views, on the question of how Africa is adapting to the dialectic of integration & disintegration," and whether it will be able to manage its consequences is insightful. But what is invaluable service is highlighting the importance of the problem and the concern for it inside Africa.