This Statistical Monitor intends to give a quick overview about how Regional Economic Communities (RECs) are performing and what are the outlook.

1. 2.4
3.4
3.8
4.6
4.7
6.0
6.4
6.5
-7.4
-4.8
-4.6
-2.9
-3.0
-11.0
0.2
-0.1
-15.0 -10.0 -5.0 0.0 5.0 10.0
IGAD
SADC
COMESA
CEN-SAD
UMA
EAC
ECCAS
ECOWAS
currentaccountbalance/GDP Annualaverage growth rates
AFRICAN UNION COMMISSION
ECONOMIC AFFAIRS DEPARTMENT
STATISTICS DIVISION
P.O.Box: 3243 – Roosvelt Street – W21 K19
Tel: +251 11 51 82 670 / Fax: +251 11 551 78 44
Email: crepinn@africa-union.org
website: www.austat.org
Belong to two RECs Belong to three RECs Belong to four RECs
This Statistical Monitor intends to give a quick
overview about how Regional Economic
Communities (RECs) are performing and what
are the outlook.
Figure 6: Share of current account balance in GDP and annual
average growth rates , 2013 (%)
Countries Mapping and membership by Regional Economic
Communities
plus with ECCAS at about $23 billion, and $5 billion for
ECOWAS. But the three highest levels of exports and imports
are reached in order by CEN-SAD, SADC and COMESA.
Currrent account balance and growth rate
The current account balance gives information about the eco-
nomy’s health of RECs. It seems in the figure 6 there is a cor-
relation between the current account balance and the annual
average growth rate in the most of RECs, except EAC. The
tendance is that as one goes along the deficit of the current
account balance increases, the annual growth rate decrases.
ECCAS with an annual growth around 6.4% is the only one
REC that have registered a positive current account balance. It
follows by ECOWAS although it shows a deficif of current
account balance around 1% .
All RECs got a positive growth rate in 2013 and it confirms
the economic boom that we have been observing across the
continent in recent years.
In respect of this, it is clear that the entire RECs are commit-
ted to the regional economic integration by putting in place
policies and implementing political will in order to reach
macroeconomic convergence and developement of their REC
respectively. However this performance is related to the distri-
bution of indicators. From this analysis, among RECs that are
standing out from the rest, we can quote : EAC, ECOWAS,
CEN-SAD and ECCAS.
Source: Unctad
Source: AUC

2. 0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
Population size GDP per capita us dollars
51.3%
48.7%
Male Female
0.0
2.0
4.0
6.0
8.0
10.0
6.2 6.0
5.3
3.1
2.4 2.4
0.4 0.2
3.2 3.8
3.3
1.9 3.4
2.7
2.0
1.3
Remittances FDI
Figure 1: Distribution of agriculture labour force in Africa, 2013
Figure 2: Population size and GDP per capita, 2012
Figure 4: Share of remittances and inward FDI flows in GDP,
2012 (%)
Figure 5: Trade in goods and services, 2013 (millions US)
(million) (us dollars)
Labour force in Africa
The African population reached one billion in 2009 and conti-
nues to growth, It could double to nearly two billion by 2050.
Although for ten years unprecedented economic growth has
been observed in Africa, mojority of people are still living on
less than $2 a day and 60% of African population are wor-
king in agriculture . With 51.3% of female and 48.7% of Male
working in that area, there is inequality in gender balance due
0
5
10
15
20
25
ECCAS UMA COMESA CEN-SAD ECOWAS IGAD SADC EAC
2000 2006 2012
Figure 3: Trend of regional intra-trade (%)
-100 0 100 200 300 400
EAC
IGAD
ECCAS
ECOWAS
UMA
COMESA
SADC
CEN-SAD
Exports Imports Balance
to the fact that women workforce in Agriculture is slightly
higher than men workforce.
Population size and GDP per capita
CEN-SAD is the most populous RECs with a population of
567,5 million inhabitants and accounted for over a half of the
African’s population in 2012 , UMA is the least populated
RECs with the highest GDP per capita amongst all the RECs,
estimated around $3,226.91 in 2012. Although among the
least populated RECs and among the richest, geologicaly
speaking, ECCAS registers a GDP per capita of $945.21
while SADC registers a GDP per capita of about $1,687,
which express a good economic health observed over couple
years ago. However, it concludes that in spite of economic growth
registers within RECs, the population growth is not proportional
to GDP per capita.
Intra-regional trade
The development of intra-trade can be an opportunity to scale up
regional integration and economic growth. The graph below
shows in recent years intra-trade has globaly increased although
in some RECs, such as SADC, ECOWAS and ECCAS it has de-
creased between 2000 and 20012.
The lower level of intra-trade is observed in ECCAS at the rate of
0.78% and the upper level is observed in EAC at 20.9%. With this
rate EAC is the REC that have made most progress in terms
of intra-trade, it is followed by IGAD and ECOWAS. These
figures show the lowest rate of intra-trade is in ECCAS and
descreased from 0.9% to 0.7%, between 2000 to 2012. That
means roughly 99.3% of ECCAS’ trade is made with the rest
of the world.
We learn from the Figure 4 that in 2012 and in the following
RECs: Cen-sad, Ecowas, Comesa and Uma, workers’ remit-
tances were higher than Foreign direct investment (FDI). This
shows the growth impacts of migrant remittances to the deve-
lopment of the RECs aforementioned. However, the trend of
the other remaining RECs informs that FDI represents a big-
ger part of the inflows and in ECCAS for instance, remittances
are insignificant and represent just 0.2% of GDP in 2012.
This illustrates that remittances and FDI are complements at
regional level and the development structure based on remit-
tances and FDI is not the same in the entire of RECs.
Trade in goods and services
The figure of trade in goods and services shows that only
ECCAS and ECOWAS are running a surplus in trade, the sur-
Source: Unctad
Source: Unctad
Source: Unctad
Source: UnctadSource: Unctad