Register here before 21 March 2025 (in-person and online)
You are invited to join us for a book discussion and launch of Prospects for Regional Integration in Africa – A Comparative Perspective. STIAS Fellows Andreas Freytag and Abena Oduro will be in conversation with Professor Ursula van Beek from the Department of Political Science at Stellenbosch University.
About the book
African integration has had a long history dating back to the end of colonization in the 1960s. It has generated enormous interest in recent years – not least because the continent has recently taken some bold steps to integrate further, such as the Tripartite Free Trade Area or the creation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
With this book, we offer an innovative perspective on African integration. By inviting – mostly young – African scholars from different disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, we make African voices audible and start a discussion of the African integration efforts from an African perspective, using novel criteria to judge different African integration attempts. In addition to the younger generation’s representatives, we also invited scholars from Europe and Latin America to bring other continents’ perspectives to the fore.
Andreas Freytag is a professor of economics at the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena and an honorary professor at Stellenbosch University. He is also an associate professor at the Institute of International Trade, University of Adelaide; a member of the CESifo Research Network; a STIAS fellow, a director of Tutwa Europe (www.tutwa-europe.eu); and associated with many international education organisations and think tanks. Prior to his appointment in Jena, he worked at the Kiel Institute for World Economics, the University of Cologne, Cambridge University (as a visiting scholar), and the Eesti Pank, Tallinn, Estonia. He has consulted for the EU Commission, the OECD, the IMF, and various public and private clients. Freytag has obtained degrees from the Universities of Kiel and Cologne. He has published a number of books and articles on economic policy, international trade policy, development economics, and international policy coordination.
Abena D. Oduro is a STIAS Fellow and an associate professor of economics at the University of Ghana. She is a member of the African Centre of Excellence for Inequality Research (ACEIR) which is hosted at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She was president of the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) between June 2021 and June 2022. She is currently an associate editor of Feminist Economics. Abena has published extensively in the area of gender and assets. Her current research interests are in gender and trade policy, women in economics, inequality, and transformative social policy.
