Afrika Boynuzu bölgesel ekonomik entegrasyon

In the last 30 years, the Horn of African region has gone through a far reaching economic transformation. This achievement was made possible partly because of the ongoing regional economic integration process. However, despite the achievements, many aspects of the regional economic integration processes are not thoroughly assessed both by the policy makers and the academia. In this doctoral research assessment of the level of economic integration in the Horn of Africa region is made using the composite index model. The index creates values from 0 to 1, where 0 implies poor performance while 1 represents best performance. The model used 6 dimensions and 20 indicators. The dimensions include trade, infrastructure, production integration, free movement of labor, macroeconomic convergence, and institutional integration. Data was analyzed to estimate the level of integration at the sectoral and country level. Country wise Kenya came to be the most integrated country in the region with 0.884 average index. It is followed by Uganda with 0.748 index and Djibouti having 0.514. Ethiopia (0.491), Sudan (0.399) and Eritrea (0.335) found to be the 4th, 5th and 6th integrated countries. The data analysis also showed that Somalia to be the lowest performing country in the regional integration effort with 0.212 average index. The overall regional economic integration is found to be 0.512. The result of the data analysis showed that institutional integration to be the most integrated sector with 0.609 average index. The second and third best performing dimensions were found to be macroeconomic convergence with 0.571 average index and trade with 0.531 average index. Productive integration (average index 0.476), infrastructure (average index 0.463), and free movement of people (average index 0.420) found to be the 4th, 5th and 6th integrated sectors. The assessment of economic integration in the Horn of Africa region has showed that the region lags far behind the acclaimed objectives that are stated in different treaties and protocols of the regional economic communities (RECs) & individual member countries. Some of the policy recommendations made to make the regional economic integration process more successful and sustainable includes; developing compensation mechanism for potential losers of the integration process, completing the free trade area in the region, strengthen the regional infrastructure base, empowering the Regional economic communities (RECs), involving the private sector and other non-state actors, policy harmonization and structural reform. Key terms Regional Economic Integration (REI), composite index, Dimensions and Indicators, Horn of Africa (HoA), Regional Economic Communities (RECs)