Opening Borders: The African Passport, Free Movement of Persons, and the Integration of States

The goal of the African Union (AU) is to achieve socio-economic and political integration of the continent. Yet scholarly research tends to ignore bargaining between African governments which is the fundamental process in which integration will be attained. Through an examination of the negotiations leading to the protocol on the Free Movement of Persons (FMP) – including its key component, the African Passport (AP) – this thesis seeks to understand why Member States ultimately adopted a policy that is traditionally seen as encroaching on national sovereignty. This thesis also analyses the general free movement policy which includes the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to identify and critically assess the AU’s overarching approach to integration. The study is grounded in the main international relations theories regarding integration, focusing on how postcolonial states voluntarily pool sovereignty to resolve socio-economic and political challenges. The thesis draws on interviews with AU elites involved in negotiations around these integrative policies and on archival research. This thesis argues that states’ negotiating positions at the AU reflected their experiences of integration efforts at the regional level. The AU Protocol on FMP was resisted by states that had stringent migration policies at the national and regional levels. Conversely, governments that implemented the protocol of FMP regionally or instituted liberal visa regimes, tended to support the AU policy during negotiations. Member states ultimately adopted the protocol on FMP as it offers flexibility for states to control the right of entry, is subject to domestic laws, and permits governments to withdraw from the policy without forfeiting membership of the AU. Thus, they saw the FMP and AfCFTA protocols as compatible with national sovereignty and as means to pursue their national interests at both the regional and AU levels. These findings are critical for our understanding of these specific integrative policies at the AU and the theoretical debates about the factors that drive or thwart regional and continental integration in Africa.