Presentation by Bruce Byiers, ECDPM, at the 2017 European Conference on African Studies (ECAS) in Basel, Switzerland. The presentation took place on 30 June during the special presentation of the SWAC/OECD publication "Cross-border Co-operation and Policy Networks in West Africa".

1. CROSS-BORDER POLICY NETWORKS -
REMARKS
Basel, 30 June 2017
Bruce Byiers
ECDPM

2. • ECDPM - Studying and facilitating EU-Africa relations
• Big concerns with « implementation gaps », « failures to apply »
• Need to understand why things are as they are – power relations!
• ….between countries and within countries
• Structural factors
• Institutional structures – formal and informal – rents!
• Actors and incentives
• Sectoral factors – behavioural? Logistic?
• External factors
• Policies need to adapt, alter, await, avoid or abandon…
The Political Economy of Regional Integration and Cooperation

3. • High transport costs despite better roads, improving trade
facilitation – need more Aid for Trade?
• Lower transp. costs not political priority
• Port & transport mkt structures
• Rentier ruled system
• Inefficient but “inclusive”
• Burkina Faso: transp. jobs trump efficiency.
• Ghana: more market-based cargo distrib.
• Togo: Some modernisation moves, collectives formation
• Côte d’Ivoire: port observatory collective action
Cross-border transport sector reform – ‘Africa Works’

4. « Cross-border cooperation and policy networks »…
• Heterogeneity of border regions, actors, cooperation potential
• Filling a gap between regionalism and regionalisation (or border
policies)?
• Most external support to ROs
• Need to take account of other dynamics, actors - networks
• Lack of private sector and CSO inputs to regionalism a key
finding
• Indicators to identify « potential cooperation » sub-regions, mental
maps…

5. Challenges…
• Policy as a starting point?
• Are policy networks an opportunity, or part of the status quo? Who
benefits from reforms?
• Talking about « a bounded set of policy actors » -
• still about formal institutions, not cross-border actors
• Different areas – different tradeoffs
• « where to develop cooperation » / »demonstrate benefits »
• Cooperation or promote policy reform?
• who has identified the problem?
• Is dynamism about arbitrage/entrepôt « cooperation »?
• Priority regions? For whom? Why?
• Cui bono?

6. Ways to build on this…?
• If coalitions are key to status quo, then mapping them helps
• identify potential champions/coalitions for future reforms
• spot unknown connections
• identify potential links to improve policy implementation
• Extensions?
• Mapping around locally identified problems?
• to commercial networks?
• Corridor approaches – many reforms, many networks
• Regional value chains e.g. livestock
• Unpicking WHY some linkages matter?
• Include political and economic power?

7. http://www.oecd.org/swac
Thank you
http:www.ecdpm.org/brucebyiers
@brucebyiers

8. EU-Africa support to regional integration
• Regional integration as a cornerstone of EU development and
international cooperation policy
• 11th EDF 2014-2020 (ACP) – EUR30.5bn
• Of which:
• EUR3.3bn regional!
• EUR2.8bn – regional in Africa
• 59% - regional economic integration
• 20% - climate, env., food sec., nat. res. management
• 15% - governance and peace and security
• 6% - technical cooperation and non-focal areas
• Mostly channeled through ROs…..!