TY - JOUR

T1 - Developmental Regionalism and Regional Value Chains: Pitfalls to South Africa's Vision for the Tripartite Free Trade Area

AU - Scholvin, Sören

N1 - Funding Information: Keywords: South Africa, developmental regionalism, regional value chains, Tripartite Free Trade Area Sören Scholvin is a research fellow at the Institute of Economic and Cultural Geography, University of Hannover. His research interests are world cities and global value chains in the Global South, regional development in sub-Saharan Africa and South America, and the energy policy of emerging economies. From 2015 to 2018, he worked on a research project on “Gateway Cities and their Hinterlands” financed by the German Research Foundation. A main output of this project is the soon-to-be published edited volume Value Chains in Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges of Integration into the Global Economy (Springer, 2019). E-mail: <scholvin@wigeo.uni-hannover.de>

PY - 2019/3/25

Y1 - 2019/3/25

N2 - Regional integration via the Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) received a significant boost when the South African parliament signed the corresponding agreement in October 2018. This article uncovers the convictions and objectives that drive South Africa’s commitment to the TFTA. It reveals that South Africa sees the TFTA as a means of “developmental regionalism,” which is expected to facilitate region-wide industrialisation based on value addition in regional value chains (RVCs). For this purpose, South Africa seeks to coordinate industrial policies within the TFTA and rehabilitate infrastructure jointly with the regional states. In addition to explaining the logic behind these goals, and analysing how far they have already been achieved, the article also highlights important challenges to South Africa’s vision for the TFTA. It calls the prospects of developmental regionalism into question, being particularly sceptical about the way in which RVCs are conceived.

AB - Regional integration via the Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) received a significant boost when the South African parliament signed the corresponding agreement in October 2018. This article uncovers the convictions and objectives that drive South Africa’s commitment to the TFTA. It reveals that South Africa sees the TFTA as a means of “developmental regionalism,” which is expected to facilitate region-wide industrialisation based on value addition in regional value chains (RVCs). For this purpose, South Africa seeks to coordinate industrial policies within the TFTA and rehabilitate infrastructure jointly with the regional states. In addition to explaining the logic behind these goals, and analysing how far they have already been achieved, the article also highlights important challenges to South Africa’s vision for the TFTA. It calls the prospects of developmental regionalism into question, being particularly sceptical about the way in which RVCs are conceived.

KW - Developmental regionalism

KW - Regional value chains

KW - South Africa

KW - Tripartite free trade area

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85062825429&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1177/000203971805300305

DO - 10.1177/000203971805300305

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85062825429

VL - 53

SP - 115

EP - 129

JO - Africa Spectrum

JF - Africa Spectrum

SN - 0002-0397

IS - 3

ER -