Regional trade agreements proliferated in Africa in the wake of independence from colonial rule. For the most part these agreements failed to deliver the regional integration and economic benefits that were promised, and amounted to little more than a propaganda coup for the leaders that signed them.This book explores conventional explanations of the failure of these agreements, and challenges the accepted wisdom, highlighting the symbiotic relationship between 'Big Man' politics and crony capitalism. The rise of second generation regional trade agreements in the first decade of the twenty-first century emphasises the pressing need for a revised assessment of the aims, consequences and scope of these agreements. This book focuses on the revitalized East African Community to examine the potential benefits of modern agreements to foster economic development and the hurdles that must be overcome to realise this potential.

How do you measure the progress countries are making in economic development? Should measurements focus on per capita income or output? Or should assessments also consider education, health, a clean environment, or a participatory political system? These questions have vexed national leaders, international donor agencies, and development practitioners for decades. This book was conceived to address the lack of definitive, comprehensive measures of development among policymakers, economists, and other social scientists. It presents a unique and innovative measurement system for country progress in six aspects of development: economic performance, competitiveness, education, health, environment, and democracy and freedom. The authors scored over 100 countries individually and plotted their development performance along six vectors, allowing them to be benchmarked against one another. They illustrate at a glance whether the country's development is balanced and allows the country's progress to be monitored over time. This book presents the conceptual framework supporting a Development Web model, the scoring systems, as well as 100 individual Country Development Webs accompanied by discussions of their scores and country conditions. Copublished with SRI

Post-colonial Africa is littered with regional trade agreements that amounted to little more than a photo opportunity for the leaders that signed them. This book explores conventional explanations for past failures and posits a new theory rooted in the symbiotic relationship between authoritarian politics and crony-capitalism.