Supranational or cooperative? Rethinking the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement Competition Protocol institutional design

Abstract

African countries are currently negotiating the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Competition Protocol (CP) to regulate competition in the created continental market. However, the most daunting task for the negotiators and African countries is which institutional design to adopt at the continental level, pitying against a supranational or cooperative institutional model. Drawing from a dearth of literature on institutional designs, I propose two factors that African countries should consider when deciding on the most appropriate institutional design for the AfCFTA CP. First are the benefits and costs of each institution design building on the experiences of existing regional competition regimes. Second is the institutional context in which the AfCFTA Continental Competition Regime (CCR) will be established, which constitutes African countries’ attitudes towards supranational institutions, preference heterogeneity, and power distributions. The findings of this article show that African countries should establish a less ambitious institution design that will attract business and political acceptance.