The World Bank’s board of executive directors have discussed a Regional Integration Assistance Strategy aimed at improving trade links and enhancing the economic integration of six Central African countries.

The strategy suggests IDA funding for various technical assistance and infrastructure investments over the next five years.

The strategy will support the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) to improve trade links between its member countries—Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon. It will do so by planning to build new roads and improve existing ones, modernize and integrate the financial sector, and by speeding up transaction time at the ports and customs. This will facilitate the movement of goods, people, and capital and reduce transaction costs.

Central Africa is well endowed with natural resources, including petroleum, gold, tin, bauxite, uranium and iron ore, yet includes some of the poorest people in the world. While poverty reduction is essentially a national concern,  regional integration can contribute to its achievement through the establishment of  conditions to promote accelerated growth, by ensuring more stable macroeconomic conditions, greater openness to the rest of the world and a more favorable business climate.

Trade facilitation planned under the strategy will complement ongoing efforts to reform customs practices and transit processes, the latter currently holding up goods in the port of Douala, Cameroon for weeks—a delay that it is hoped can be brought down to days.

“It is increasingly recognized that economic integration can be a beneficial for small landlocked economies,” said Marie-Fran