As argued in Chapter 15, regionalization and free trade arrangements have enormous potential for creating employment, facilitating investment and fostering growth in Africa. Regionalization can expand the market space of individual SSA firms and grant them the opportunity to reap the economic benefits of scale. African governments have therefore considered it an important item on the political agenda since the 1950s. The contribution of regionalization to intra-African trade has, however, been rather modest. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) (2013:2) reports that the average share of intra-African exports in total merchandise exports in Africa was barely 11% between 2007 and 2011 (compared with 50% in developing Asian countries, 21% in Latin America and the Caribbean and 70% in Europe).