The contributions made in this book by prominent international lawyers in the field aim at highlighting the current challenges that African nations face in relation to the investment regime. The various contributions also suggest paths to shape an African voice in the reform of the investment regime and to ensure that international investment agreements contribute better to the sustainable development of African countries.

This chapter assesses the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) regional project as an international regime. Although ASEAN’s regime is underpinned by unique features, certain characteristics of other regional integrations are still evident. Accordingly, ASEAN’s regime is devoid of complete synchrony of state parties’ normative interests and the surrender to implementing institutions of the regional project. Although ASEAN has been lauded as a successful regional integration project, its normative beliefs have been constructed around its identity as a regional project. Indeed, ASEAN member states might have taken inspiration from the EU, but they continue to be highly cautious about institutional arrangements that centralise decision-making and dilute state sovereignty. Hence, the gains of prosperity recorded so far are largely driven by individual countries’ efforts rather than a collective outcome of normative interests and obeisance to the implementing institutions.

We can now arguably tell the story of prosperity and international trade law from the prism of the Global South that this book set out to explore. This book is the first comprehensive piece of legal scholarship that provides an analytical tale of selected contemporary free trade agreements around the globe and whether their creation and operationalisation are informed by normative beliefs and interests. We posit that the debate about prosperity emanating from trade liberalisation has largely been exaggerated/misconceived in scholarships over the years. Indeed, the vision of prosperity flowing from trade liberalisation as advanced in contemporary scholarship is nothing more than a mirage of prosperity as the underlining premise and approach is incongruous with the ability of the codified international trade rules to engender adherence. While these regional trade arrangements are seemingly driven by echoes of economic prosperity, there is a disconnection between this ambition and normative belief in the institutions created to engender the implementation of the codified regional trade arrangements.

This chapter examines the legal and policy regime that governs the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement (AfCFTA) and the underlying constraints. The AfCFTA, regarded as the largest trade arrangement after the World Trade Organization (WTO) in terms of the number of participating countries, seeks to utilise economic integration to promote pan-African development as a pathway to prosperity. With a commitment to eliminate tariffs and non-tariff barriers (NTBs) in intra-African trade, the AfCFTA is governed by general and specific objectives as well as principles aimed at making the agreement a transformative instrument of African prosperity. While the AfCFTA is a consequence of normative beliefs and common identity of the state parties, there are fears that NTBs and prevalent weak institutions could frustrate the expected outcome. This further buttresses our contention that normative interests should be mutually constitutive with the institutions established to manage the underlying implementation for prosperity to be realised. Although development and, ultimately, prosperity are well constructed under the AfCFTA agenda, there must be complementarity between the AfCFTA regime and the implementing institutions. This chapter proffers the way forward to navigate these dynamics.

This is not only a book for international lawyers. International relations scholars and economists will find it a useful thought-provoking critical analysis on how to understand the functionality of regional trade regimes in the Global South. This monograph is the first of its kind to provide an innovative account of four regional trade agreements (RTAs) – that is, the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) and the United States–Mexico–Canada Free Trade Agreement (USMCA) – from the prism of normative beliefs and interests. This book argues that while there has been immense enthusiasm amongst countries in the Global South to create RTAs, the enthusiasm has not been translated into concerted efforts to make the RTAs work as envisaged. RTAs in the Global South are largely void of concreteness. This book reflects on how normative beliefs and interests inform inter-state relations and, thereby, the law of regional economic community. In so doing, we argue that the idea of prosperity underpinning RTAs as they currently exist is more of a mirage than reality.

Considering the analyses in the preceding chapters, this chapter frames the discussions in the context of the contestations about regional trade arrangements and the extent to which interests and beliefs as a constructivist model enable us to understand the operationalisation / lack of operationalisation of each of the three RTAs discussed in the preceding chapters. This chapter extensively explores the fallacy of integrations in the Global South as a driver of prosperity. It discusses the relevant lessons that can be drawn from the operation of regional trade arrangements from the different regional groupings discussed in these chapters for academic scholarships as well as future trade negotiations. Although the substantive content of regional economic treaties hinges on what any regional grouping believes is international legal obligations that should govern their economic activities, such regional economic treaties will hardly stand the test of time if the same architects of the regional grouping do not buy into their presumed shared sense of economic and social commonality.

This chapter argues that, albeit with variations, each of the three countries – that is, the US, Mexico and Canada – that belong to the USMCA can point to some concrete positive economic and welfare developments that have been realised because of NAFTA. The relative success of NAFTA / the USMCA has largely happened because of the belief that the three contracting parties have in the institution created to enhance the implementation of obligations under the agreement. Indeed, in 1994, NAFTA placed emphasis on the creation of ‘effective procedures for the implementation and application’ of member states’ obligations. In contrast to dispute settlement under the AfCFTA, ASEAN and MERCOSUR, a premium was placed on an effective dispute settlement mechanism. This explains why the USMCA’s chapter 10 is viewed as the ‘crown jewel’ of the RTA. The same can be said of Chapter 14 on ISDS which even has authority to review decisions by, for instance, a state court in the US. Further, we have also argued that free trade agreements between a hegemon and countries at a lower level of economic and political development may likely lead to the loss of ability by the party at the lower stages of development to adopt trade measures for the protection of its own industries.

The idea of regional trade agreements like ASEAN, the AfCFTA, MERCOSUR and even the USMCA as useful linchpins for development and prosperity is driven by globalisation. Most of these fragmented trade regimes that have emerged in the later part of the twentieth and the early twenty-first century have been informed by the discourse on globalisation and the connectivity of international economic order. Therefore, this chapter explores the linkages between the concept of globalisation and regional trade agreements. These linkages are explored to provide some contexts in the second part of the book on how the idea of prosperity as a fundamental rationale behind RTAs in the Global South is more of a myth than reality. It further analyses the evolving discourse on the nexus between regional integration and prosperity to better improve existing and future RTAs to the benefit of its constituent members.