Ghana in Search of Regional Integration Agenda 69 It was this kind of thinking that was so persuasive to most Pan-Africanists that they called for a political union of Africa. 89 The post-War realities have caused a change in the thinking about what integration should be, how it should be built, and for what it should exist. Integration is now perceived more as trade-induced and therefore an economic phenomenon. As already indicated, the case for free trade and integration was made more forcefully by economists in the 1950s. It was strongly believed that free trade leads to increased welfare and also that customs unions would lead to the most efficient utilisation of world resources and this would maximise world out-put and welfare. Interestingly enough, the positions of both Haas and Lindberg reverberate in all discourses on integration. In essence, free trade and economic integration result in exactly what they are saying. In purely economic and/or trade terms therefore, Regionalism or Regional integration may be defined as the commercial policy of discriminatively reducing or eliminating trade barriers only among the nations joining together. This is the model known to have been followed and successfully carried through. A living example is the European Union(EU). This is what has been aptly called the market approach to integration. There are various degrees of economic integration. 90 Degree(Types) of Integration For the attainment of a full-fledged integration, a regional bloc may have to go through four main stages of economic cooperation. 91 i. A Free Trade Area(FTA), in which members remove trade barriers among themselves, but keep their separate national barriers against trade with the outside world. In such a setting, customs inspectors must still police the borders between members in order to tax or prohibit trade that might otherwise avoid 89 This was the call by W. E. B Du Bois, Sylvester Williams, Marcus Garvey, and a host of the Diasporian Pan-Africanists. Throughout Nkrumah's life, he called for a Union of African States(OAS), and indeed formed the Ghana-Guinea-Mali Union, naming it the OAS(the nucleus of African unity). Some others(e.g., President Muamar Gadthafi of Libya) are still calling for this kind of political integration of the African Continent. 90 Indeed some scholars have argued that for Africa, integration must take the'production approach'. See, for instance, S.K.B. Asante Regionalism and Africa's Development: Expectations, Reality, and Challenges, London, Macmillan Press, 1997. But I have argued elsewhere that there cannot be any such thing. If integration is trade-induced and production is an integral part of trade and both are inseparable from the concept of the market, then there is only one approach – the market approach. Trade and production are a function of the market. See Antwi-Danso V, Regionalism and Economic Integration in Africa: Challenges and Prospects in Legon Journal of International Affairs, vol. 3 No.2, pp135-158 91 Others think that there are six stages: the first stage is a Preferential Trade Area(PTA) and the last one is a Political Union. We note these, but in the strict sense of economic integration the four being described here are the more important. A political union may follow a full economic union. A PTA hardly allows integration to flourish, since no barriers are removed.