The next phase of extensive trade talks with the EU have been discussed by West African ministers in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
The meeting on Monday included talks on how to incorporate interim deals already struck by the Ivory Coast and Ghana, two of the regions biggest economies, who export cocoa and bananas.
The pair, anxious to safeguard their exports before preferential trade deals that expire on December 31, have initialled free-trade deals for goods.
The agreement came after talks in Brussels failed to set broader economic partnership agreements (EPAs) on goods and other areas.
The EPAs have been viewed as damaging to Africa and rejected by some West African leaders.
However, a compromise is being sought by the EU, the 15-member Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) and Mauritania.
Regional integration
Mohamed Ibn Chambas, the Ecowas commission president, said at the meeting: "We will be working to harmonise the accords of the middle-income countries to integrate them into a regional framework.
"In the era of globalisation, regional integration remains the only possible way to exist and be a respected actor in world development."
The Ivory Coast and Ghana deals are said to have made an agreement more difficult. They set an immediate abolition of EU tariffs on virtually all exports to the EU and a gradual removal of 80 per cent of imports from Europe over 15 years.
Mamadou Sanou, Burkina Faso's trade minister, said: "The European Commission's decision to negotiate bilaterally causes more problems than it solves."
Tariff structures
Sanou said: "If we don't fully assess the implications to bring these bilateral accords back into the regional process, we run the risk of seeing multiple tariff structures, in a way re-nationalising foreign trade policy."
The EU has offered to remove all import tariffs for countries signing EPAs, which they say are the best alternative for current trade preferences given to nearly 80 countries.
The trade preferences are considerered illegal by the World Trade Organisation.
Jose Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, said in a magazine interview this week: "Our offer is generous and sincere. Much more so than the Americans, Russians or the Chinese. Which continent are African exports going to? Europe. Why all this criticism?"
Source: aljazeera
