COMESA – The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa

COMESA is the short for The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa. It was formed in December 1994 to replace the former Preferential Trade Area (PTA) which had existed from the early 1980’s.

It is the largest regional economic organization in Africa with 19 member states: Burundi, Comoros, DRC, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Rwanda, Seychelles, South Africa, Sudan, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

COMESA was established was established “as an organization of free, independent states which have agreed to cooperate in developing their natural and human resources for the good of all their people”.

COMESA Centre is located in Lusaka. It is home to the Secretary General’s Office and most of the more than 150 staff members many of the organization’s functions are carried out from the COMESA Centre.

Structure of COMESA

The Authority is made up of heads of States and Governments

The authority sets the policies and makes sure that COMESA achieves its objectives

The Council of Ministers

• It is the second highest organ. It is made up of Ministers of the member states.
• It makes sure that COMESA functions properly
• It also makes decisions on the programmes and activities of COMESA.

The Inter-government Committee

• It is made up of Permanent .Secretaries from the Member States.
• The committee develops programmes and action plans and makes sure that the Common Market functions properly

The Committee for the Heads of Central Banks

• It makes financial and budgetary decisions

The COMESA Court of Justice

• It is the legal or judicial organ of COMESA. It makes decisions on any disputes that there may be among the Member States
• It is headed by a President and has six additional judges appointed by the Authority.

12 Technical Committees

• The Committees cover different areas such as agriculture, legal affairs, tourism and wildlife, trade and monetary affairs etc.
• The Technical Committees prepare programmes and make sure they are carried out properly

Priorities and objectives of COMESA

• Establishing a Customs Union
• Formation of a large economic and trading unit
• Formation of a free trade area

The custom is meant to merge or join a number of customs territories into a single customs territory where custom duties and other measures that restrict trade are removed between the merged territories.

A free trade area a trade group whose member countries charge little or no tariffs or price control on goods traded between these countries. They create a trade policy that all countries in the free trade area agree to.

Advantages of a free trade area

• Consumers have access to cheaper and/or better quality foreign goods
• Prices decrease because governments reduce or remove tariffs
• It increases the profitability of each country because it allows agreeing nations to focus on producing goods they are best at making

Functions of COMESA

It focuses on formation of a large economic and trading unit by:

• Attaining sustainable growth and development of member countries.
• Promoting joint development in all fields of economic activity
• Creating a sustainable environment for domestic and foreign investment
• Encourage close relations between member countries
• Working together to strength the relations between COMESA and the rest of the world
• Maintaining peace and security between member Countries so that economic development ties in the region are strengthened.