TUESDAY, 5.30PM
AFRICAN leaders attending the Organisation of African Unity summit in Harare on Tuesday held the historic first meeting of the African Economic Community, an organisation founded to promote economic unity and fight poverty and deprivation.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who assumed chairmanship of the 53-member OAU at its 33rd summit, said the establishment of the AEC constitutes a standard by which Africa’s future economic policies will be judged by Africans and outsiders. Mugabe said the event, witnessed by 28 heads of state and government and three prime ministers, crowned efforts by the OAU stretching several decades.
Mugabe, speaking on the second day of the OAU summit, emphasised that the pillars of the AEC are the African regional integration bodies specified in the Abuja Treaty adopted in June 1991, which came into force in 1994.
What African countries must now do, said Mugabe, is to integrate their markets and transform their economies, which are currently characterised by low levels of industrialisation, high dependence on international trade, extremely low levels of intra-African trade, and small markets.