The Regional Economic Communities RECs. RECs. RECs RECs.

The Regional Economic Communities (RECs) are regional groups of African countries. In general, the RECs help in facilitating regional economic integration among members of individual regions and through the larger African Economic Community (AEC), which was established under the Abuja Treaty (1991).
One country may be a member of several RECs. There are thus overlaps of members between different RECs. The African Union recognises eight (8) RECs. The RECs data must therefore be interpreted by considering that some RECs are not mutually exclusive. This is the case, for example, with ECOWAS and CEN-SAD, two RECs that share a good number of common members.