The year 2018 marked the establishment of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), a major milestone in the long march towards African economic integration. The Abuja Treaty, which establishes the African Economic Community, entered into force in 1994. It sought to create an African Economic Community to enhance regional and continental economic integration and to expand trade, promote structural transformation and thereby foster the overall social and economic development of African countries. The Abuja Treaty is the concretization of the objectives of the Lagos Plan of Action and the Final Act of Lagos, which in 1980 reaffirmed the national and collective self-reliance, including the creation of an African Common Market as a prelude to the African Economic Community.

In July 2004, the then Executive Secretary of ECA, Mr. Amoako, said a vision was needed of how to combine the pragmatism of regional integration with the complexity of the African continent, during the launch of the first-ever continent-wide assessment on such integration efforts, known as the Assessing Regional Integration in Africa Report.