African, Arab, and Gulf Regionalism

Beneath the continental level, Africa's regional economic communities (RECs) form a dense layer of sub-regional integration, eight of which are formally recognized by the African Union as building blocks toward continental unity. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was founded by the Treaty of Lagos in 1975, bringing together fifteen West African states with the initial aim of promoting trade and economic integration, but it has since developed a significant political and security role, including a standby force, ECOMOG, that intervened in the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone during the 1990s; Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso announced their withdrawal from ECOWAS in 2024 following military coups. In Southern Africa, the Southern African Development Coordination Conference, formed in 1980 to reduce member states' economic dependence on apartheid-era South Africa, was reconstituted as the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in 1992. The East African Community (EAC), originally established in 1967, collapsed in 1977 amid political and economic disputes but was revived by treaty in 2000 and has since expanded to include Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Somalia.