Latin American economic integration began before that of Africa, but there has not been a single regional organization like the Organization for African Unity (OAU) and the African Union (AU) to plan and coordinate integration practice.
While the level of economic integration in the two main regions is relatively low and neither exceeds the scope of the free trade zone and the customs union, the degree of economic integration in Latin America is generally higher than in Africa, an analysis indicates. of the China Institute of International Studies (CIIS).
For the CIIS, there are a large number of integrated institutions and their overlapping phenomena are serious, which does not lead to the best allocation of integrated resources.
In fact, from their perspective, African integration thinking and practice at the continental level are obviously stronger than Latin America, and it is stronger than Latin America in the direction of integration.
Looking ahead, the CIIS believes that it is difficult to achieve great progress in the integration of Latin America, while the integration of Africa will continue to advance amid twists and turns.
Economic integration
The policy of early industrialization by import substitution objectively promoted the development of national industries in several countries.
For example, the Central American Common Market stimulated the development of regional industries by eliminating internal tariffs and trade barriers and implementing uniform tariffs to the outside world, achieving the objective of «import substitution» for non-durable consumer goods manufactured locally.
Second, although Latin America has not yet constituted an influential economic integration organization at the regional level, the subregional integration organizations represented by the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Mercosur and the Pacific Alliance have had an outstanding performance and they have achieved remarkable results.
But the current process of Latin American integration has been severely frustrated by the ideological differences between the member states, and, according to CIIS, the economic integration organization represented by the Pacific Alliance is barely maintained, which shows once again that cooperation economic is the source of the power of integration.
