Talk:African Economic Community

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Africa
Africa Portal
This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Africa, which collaborates on articles related to Africa in Wikipedia. To participate, you can edit this article or visit the project page for more details.
Start This article has been rated as Start-class on the quality scale.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.
This article is supported by WikiProject Western Sahara. See also The Western Sahara Portal.
Assessment comments

Contents

[edit] stalled non-pillar blocs

I wonder if we should remove MRU, LGA, COI, CEPGL... they are alreay made obsolete by other blocs. Maybe only IGAD and UMA have some means to be included (because of AEC-relations)? Alinor 13:13, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Mh, I'd keep them for reference somewhere, but maybe not in the main table. —Nightstallion (?) 13:32, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] dates

Dates of membership/joining add some dynamism to the table... All blocs except COMESA have full date info. For COMESA I can find only joining dates of the most recent states (and leaving dates of some/all that leaved?/ states). I can't even find list of COMESA founding members (if they are found the remaining will be few and easier to find). Also missing are OAU joining dates/founding list. AU is different organisation, but it is a dirrect successor; also all 53 members will get "2002" if we stick to AU - and Morocco will not get "withdraw date" - so I suggest sticking to OAU dates. Alinor 00:07, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Map of overlapping pillars in AEC

Image:AECoverlap.png

Let's see if we can make something out of this.

  • Currently it shows the overlapping between ECOWAS, ECCAS, EAC, SADC, COMESA, IGAD.
  • Only full members are covered. Candidates/Applicants are not distinguished (eg. Seychells is colored as COMESA only, not as SADC/COMESA overlapped).
  • Legend
    • yellow: SADC
    • darkgreen: ECCAS
    • brightgreen: COMESA
    • darkred: ECOWAS
    • red: IGAD
    • lightblue: SADC/EAC
    • blue: EAC/COMESA/IGAD
    • moot green: SADC/COMESA
    • pink: ECCAS/COMESA
    • darkpink: ECCAS/COMESA/SADC
    • orange: IGAD/COMESA
    • (some combinations like IGAD/EAC are missing, because all such cases have EAC, so it is covered as EAC/COMESA/IGAD)
  • Non-pillar blocs are not depicted due to lack of enough colors
    • UMA
    • Agadir
    • UMA/Agadir
    • UMA/COMESA
    • Agadir/COMESA
    • SACU, UEMOA, CEMAC - maybe unneeded because all their members are inside other blocs (unlike Agadir and UMA wich have "exclusive" members)
  • Of course it would be better to use some special effects/stripes/etc. and to use only six main colors (for the pillars) and combinations of them.

Alinor 01:00, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unreadable

Much of this article is unreadable, and that includes the table. What does the "Common" placed in several cells of the table mean? What the hell does "The African Union provides greater powers to govern African economies. " mean? Why the hell do we list blocs that aren't members of the AEC as if they are relevant, in either the table or other sections? Just in order to make this a busy, confused, unreadable mess?

I'm taking a knife to this article and will be hacking it to pieces and constructing it all over again. As it stands now IMO it's downright shameful to wikipedia. Aris Katsaris 19:45, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I can answer the question regarding "common" and would highly recommend to leave it in place or at least leave the information in place: It's meant to express the fact that a number of regional organizations are subgroupings of one another, and are planning to merge in the future. SACU will merge with SADC, CEMAC with ECCAS, WAMZ and UEMOA will ultimately merge into an all-ECOWAS currency union. —Nightstallion (?) 20:45, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
I still can't understand what the dates under "common" mean. If "common" refers to a future event taking place, why are all those dates in the past? For god's sake, if this is supposed to be "information", then it's way too well-encrypted for me to even begin to understand. The people that added it there -- couldn't they take a step back from what they wrote and seen that it's utterly indecipherable to those that don't already know what it means? Aris Katsaris 21:19, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Ah, you meant the upper table. Well, in that case I'm fairly sure Alinor meant the date when the country joined "parent organization", i.e. the larger organization. It's rather badly expressed, I have to agree. —Nightstallion (?) 07:19, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
About the dates and the common field - Nightstallion is right; Also I agree that maybe it should be explained (maybe in a footnote) what "common" means. About the phrase "The African Union provides greater powers to govern African economies." - I think that I taked it from the Economics-part of the African Union article.
About the removals: UMA and Agadir are NOT irrelevant, even if they are not pillars. UMA is PROPOSED pillar and Agadir is a very functional agreement (attractive to its members, because it ensures preferential cumulation of origin in regards to the EU import rules). So LGA, COI, MRU and the rest maybe are irrelevant and making the table less readable, but UMA and Agadir should be left inside. Also I think that it would not hurt if we leave the irrelevant blocs as comment only (hidden from view, but included in source).
in the stages progress table - I don't see how two more columns are making it that bad. And again UMA and Agadir are not totaly irrelevant.
the list of blocs - I think that it doesn't hurt to list the irrelevant blocs here (in the list, not the table) and also you have removed some VERY-relevant blocs, that are sub-groups of the pillars. Alinor 08:50, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Identity of pillars

This and this, and this name the pillars of the AEC to be the following:

  • AMU/UMA (The Arab Maghreb Union);
  • ECCAS/CEEAC (Economic Community of Central African States);
  • COMESA (Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa);
  • SADC (Southern African Development Community); and
  • ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States)

I've not been able to find a reference to either IGAD or EAC being pillars of the AEC. Given the above three references that I cite, I will now alter the article to list the above 5 blocs as pillars of the AEC. Aris Katsaris 14:35, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New info

These changes should be implemented into the article. —Nightstallion (?) 18:58, 18 July 2006 (UTC)