The Africa regional integration index is designed to measure the extent to which each country in Africa is meeting its commitments under the various pan-African integration frameworks, such as Agenda 2063 and the Abuja Treaty.
The index, which is a joint project of the African Development Bank, the African Union Commission and the Economic Commission for Africa, covers the following dimensions: free movement of persons, trade integration, productive integration, regional interconnections and infrastructure, and macroeconomic policy convergence.
Headline Findings
Overall, Côte d’Ivoire is performing well in such dimensions as the free movement of people and trade integration. The index’s findings indicate, however, that the country could boost its integration by further upgrading its internet and energy infrastructure.
- First in ECOWAS (score: 0.675).
CEN-SAD
How Côte d’Ivoire Ranks Within CEN-SAD
Compare Côte d’Ivoire's Dimension Scores
ECOWAS
How Côte d’Ivoire Ranks Within ECOWAS
Compare Côte d’Ivoire's Dimension Scores
Analysis of Côte d’Ivoire's Performance Across Dimensions
Free movement of persons: Côte d’Ivoire has taken very effective measures to ensure the free movement of persons. Citizens of 26 African countries are allowed to enter the country visa-free or with a visa on arrival, which places Côte d’Ivoire in ninth place among African countries and first place in ECOWAS. In addition, Côte d’Ivoire has ratified the protocols on the free movement of persons of the regional economic communities to which it belongs, namely, the Community of Sahelo-Saharan States (CEN-SAD) and ECOWAS.
Trade integration: Côte d’Ivoire has made significant progress towards the elimination of tariff barriers to intra-community imports. Thus, the average tariff on imports from within ECOWAS is a mere 0.7 per cent – the third lowest among ECOWAS members, and for imports from the countries of CEN-SAD the average tariff is 0.6 per cent.
Trade levels between Côte d’Ivoire and the other countries of ECOWAS and CEN-SAD are high. The country is highly integrated in terms of the share of its GDP constituted by both imports and exports: it occupies fourth place and third places for intra-ECOWAS and intra-CEN-SAD imports, which totalled 11.1 and 11.4 per cent of GDP in 2013, respectively. In terms of exports, Côte d’Ivoire is also highly integrated with the rest of the subregion.
Productive integration: The productive integration index (relating to regional value chains) ranks countries in terms of their intra-regional trade in intermediate goods, both upstream (exports) and downstream (imports).
Côte d’Ivoire has a strong upstream integration with the rest of the subregion. The category of its exports is about the third best in CEN-SAD and the second best in ECOWAS. In terms of downstream integration, its imports had the fourth best category in CEN-SAD in 2012 and the seventh best in ECOWAS in 2013. This suggests that the country’s downstream integration with regional value chains is not as strong as its upstream integration (United Nations Statistics Division, 2015).
Infrastructure: In the present analysis, this dimension is confined to connectivity and to electrical supply.
Based on the analysis of 2013 data from the ECA African Trade Policy Centre, in terms of the quality of its internet bandwidth per capita, Côte d’Ivoire is ranked twenty-fourth in the continent and sixth among ECOWAS members. It has the eighth strongest per capita net electricity production capacity in Africa, and the fourth highest among the member countries of ECOWAS.
- Free movement of persons: score matches that of all other ECOWAS member countries (score: 0.8).
- Trade integration: second position in ECOWAS (score: 0.97). The top ranking country in ECOWAS is Nigeria (score: 1).
- Productive integration: productive seventh position in ECOWAS (score: 0.28). Top ranking country in ECOWAS is the Gambia (score: 0.52).
- Infrastructure: ninth position in ECOWAS (score: 0.37). Top ranking country in ECOWAS is Cabo Verde (score: 0.68).
- Financial integration and macroeconomic policy convergence: seventh position in ECOWAS (score: 0.94). Top ranking country in ECOWAS is the Niger (score: 1).
References
This material is reproduced from the ECA Country Profile on Guinea published in April 2016, from the box on the Africa Regional Integration Index.