If proof was needed that regional integration is indeed the great challenge of the current decade for the immense and potentially very rich community of the Congo Basin, the appeal launched on Wednesday by Denis Sassou N’Guesso during the passage of witness to his counterpart Félix Tshisekedi is there to bring it. It confirms the fact that the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), at the heart of which are the two Congos, will do everything possible in the years to come to lower the artificial barriers which separate its peoples and thus of it the main engine of African emergence on the international scene.
At the heart of the strategy that our own president defined at the end of the troubles of the end of the previous century, the creation of the Congo Basin community goes far beyond the economy, finance and trade. It aims to make this part of the world one of the major players in sustainable development by making better use of the vast natural resources it possesses, by developing internal trade between the eleven countries that make it up, by easing the tensions that threaten to destabilize it, by involving the Congo Basin in the fight against climate change and for the protection of nature on which the survival of the human species depends to a large extent. In other words, by playing the fraternity card.
The growing attention paid by all the great powers to the emergence of this part of the world confirms, if need be, that the historical movement which is taking shape there day by day is already perceived by them. as one of the major acts of this century. With as a very concrete consequence their involvement in various forms in the march forward which is becoming clearer over the entire extent of Central Africa in order to derive fair benefits from it; an involvement to which Europe, China, Russia, the United States and India are showing more and more clearly and which can only have good results if sub-regional integration accelerates.
In this very positive context, two requirements stand out as having to figure at the top of the strategic objectives of ECCAS: to protect peace throughout the Congo Basin and to restore it wherever it is threatened.
