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had hoped that Doha would erase the disappointments associated withthe Uruguay Rounds in a new era of fairness. In Doha, African countrieshad expected a leveled playing field and real solutions to the plight ofAfrican farmers, who have been suffering from the effects of subsidiesgiven to their counterparts in the rich nations. We were praying for afair multilateral system where African countries could trade their waysout of poverty.Perhaps we can use this status of stalemate and minimal progress toreflect on the need to increase intra-African trade. If other countriesare reluctant to open up their markets to Africa, let us do it for ourselves.Let neighbouring countries buy more from and sell more toeach other. If our RECs remove their respective internal trade barriers,rationalise their operations and dismantle barriers that preventone REC from trading with another, then they would have made agiant leap in the direction of an African Economic Community. Andinitiatives such as Doha would no longer determine our developmentfuture.This is why the new ECA has made regional integration one of its twokey pillars, and the RECs its very foundation. Some of our regional officesare co-located with the operational headquarters of the RECs.Where this is not the case, we will post a Senior Adviser to serve asECA liaison, to work more closely with you on a day-to-day basis andrespond quickly to your immediate needs and challenges.The new ECA will, more vigorously, focus on the specific needs of theRECs through a region-specific, multi-year partnership strategy withclear milestones. We will tangibly increase our technical support tothe RECs and Member States by increasing the technical capacitiesof our regional offices and substantially increasing their operationalbudgets. We will make special efforts to ensure that our sub-regionalwork programme is directly relevant to the priorities of the RECs.I believe that this focus will deepen our existing collaboration withSADC, especially in the development of policy frameworks and programmesfor transport, ICT, mining, energy, gender, labour, agriculture,land tenure systems, HIV/AIDS and corporate governance.I would like to recall, with satisfaction, our collaboration with SADCin transit transport facilitation, road safety, implementation of theYamoussoukro Decision on air transport liberalisation, and air trans-82 Part Two