The need for regional economic integration in Africa was appreciated by most African leaders soon after their countries had become independent sovereign states early in the 1960s. Although they did not always make enough distinction between economic integration and political unity (indeed some, particularly the leaders of the so-called Casablanca group of countries, held the doctrinaire view that political unity and the formation of a United States of Africa must precede economic integration), and although very little has been achieved in either field, yet the past decade is likely to go down in African history as the decade of economic and political integration rather than the development decade.1 However, if positive results are to be achieved in the 1970s, the old doctrinaire attitude must give way to a more pragmatic approach, which neither demands political union as a precondition for economic integration nor takes an all-or-nothing attitude to the latter.