Most readers of Africa Center come here to find country-level numbers: a population, a GDP, a literacy rate. The institutions that shape those numbers are continental and sub-regional. Tariff rates, currency arrangements, free movement of people, common standards — these are negotiated through the African Union and the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) it recognises, not just at country level. This page is a reference to those institutions: what each one is, who is in it, and what membership actually changes for a country.
The African Union
The African Union (AU) is the continent-wide intergovernmental organisation. Every recognised African state is a member, plus the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (Western Sahara) which the AU recognises but the United Nations lists as a non-self-governing territory. The AU was established in 2002 as the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), founded in 1963. Its headquarters are in Addis Ababa, in a campus complex on the site of the original OAU headquarters.
The AU's principal organs include the Assembly of Heads of State and Government, the Executive Council of foreign ministers, the Pan-African Parliament, the African Commission, and a series of specialised technical bodies — the African Peer Review Mechanism, the Peace and Security Council, the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights. For the purposes of reading data, the AU matters most as the body that defines membership of the continent and that has launched the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), the largest trade agreement on the continent by country count.
AfCFTA came into force in 2019 and aims, over a multi-year tariff-reduction schedule, to create a single continent-wide market for goods and services. Most AU members have signed and ratified, with implementation rolling out by sector. Statistics on intra-African trade are increasingly framed against the AfCFTA timeline.
The eight Regional Economic Communities
The AU formally recognises eight Regional Economic Communities as the building blocks of continental integration. Some operate as full common markets, others are looser coordination bodies; the membership of several overlaps. Most African countries belong to more than one REC.
ECOWAS — Economic Community of West African States
The principal regional bloc in West Africa. ECOWAS operates a common external tariff, a passport regime that allows free movement of citizens within the bloc, and a peacekeeping arm (ECOMOG). Eight of its members also share the West African CFA franc; see Africa's currency arrangements. ECOWAS membership broadly aligns with what we call West Africa on this site, though Mauritania left in 2000 and is not currently a member.
EAC — East African Community
The most integrated REC by some measures. The EAC operates a customs union and a common market with formal free movement of labour and capital between members. Its members include Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. Several members have publicly committed to a future single currency, though implementation has been repeatedly delayed.
SADC — Southern African Development Community
The principal bloc in Southern Africa, plus several Central African and Indian Ocean island states. SADC operates a free trade area and has a regional protocol on movement of people. South Africa is the dominant economy. SADC membership extends beyond the geographic region we use on this site — Tanzania, the DRC, Madagascar and the Comoros are members, along with the core Southern African states.
ECCAS — Economic Community of Central African States
The continental REC for Central Africa. ECCAS membership covers Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Rwanda, and São Tomé and Príncipe. A subset of ECCAS members also belong to CEMAC, the more tightly-integrated Central African Economic and Monetary Community, which shares the Central African CFA franc.
COMESA — Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa
The largest REC by member count. COMESA operates a free trade area covering most of East and Southern Africa, with members spanning Egypt and Libya in the north, the Horn of Africa, the Great Lakes, much of Southern Africa, and the Indian Ocean islands. COMESA's geographic reach overlaps significantly with EAC, SADC and IGAD; many countries belong to more than one of these.
AMU — Arab Maghreb Union
The continental REC for North Africa: Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia. The AMU has been politically constrained since the 1990s by the Western Sahara dispute and has not progressed to the level of integration of the western or eastern blocs. North African countries' deepest integration in practice is with the European Union and the wider Arab League rather than within the AMU.
IGAD — Intergovernmental Authority on Development
The Horn of Africa bloc: Djibouti, Eritrea (currently suspended), Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda. IGAD focuses on drought response, peace and security mediation, and food-security coordination rather than tariffs and movement. Several IGAD members are also EAC and COMESA members.
CEN-SAD — Community of Sahel-Saharan States
The largest REC by geographic spread, encompassing a broad band from the Sahel north into the Maghreb and as far south as Côte d'Ivoire. CEN-SAD is the least institutionally active of the eight RECs at the time of writing; its programme of work has been disrupted by political instability in several member states.
Why membership matters for the data
For a reader of country statistics, REC membership has three concrete consequences:
- Tariff regime. A country in ECOWAS, EAC or SADC applies a different tariff schedule to imports from fellow members than to imports from outside. Trade flow data is therefore most useful when read with the bloc structure in mind.
- Currency arrangement. Eight West African and six Central African states share the CFA franc through their REC sub-arrangements (UEMOA inside ECOWAS, CEMAC inside ECCAS). A common currency removes one source of volatility in cross-country comparisons. See currency arrangements.
- Statistical harmonisation. RECs run their own statistical programmes that try to align definitions and reference periods across members. EAC, in particular, has invested in regional statistics work, which is why some indicators are easier to compare across EAC members than across other regions.
How AU and REC structure intersects with the regions on this site
The five-region grouping on Africa Center — North, West, East, Central, Southern — follows the African Union and UN Statistics Division convention. It is geographic. REC membership is institutional and overlapping: a single country (Tanzania, the DRC and Egypt are familiar examples) may belong to more than one REC, and several RECs span multiple of our geographic regions.
When you read a country profile, the regional grouping tells you the geographic peer set. The REC list above tells you the institutional peer set. The two are usually correlated but not identical.
Where to go next
- For the geographic regions on this site, see the regions overview and the side-by-side regional comparison.
- For each country's REC affiliation in context, the country profiles in the country directory note the principal regional bloc.
- For currency arrangements, including the CFA franc zones, see Africa's currency arrangements.
- For where to find primary AU and REC statistics, see data sources.
Last reviewed: 28 April 2026.