Community of Sahel-Saharan States

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Community of Sahel-Saharan States تجمع دول الساحل والصحراء Communauté des Etats Sahélo-Sahariens

Headquarters		Tripoli, Libya
Official language]]s		English, French, Arabic and Portuguese
Type		Trade bloc
Membership		25 member states
Leaders
-	Secretary General	Mohamed Al-Madani Al-Azhari
Establishment
-	Signed	4 February 1998
Website http://www.cen-sad.org/

African Union
This article is part of the series: Politics and government of the African Union

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CEN-SAD or the Community of Sahel-Saharan States (Arabic: تجمع دول الساحل والصحراء) aims to create a free trade area. There are questions with regard to whether its level of economic integration qualifies it under the Enabling clause.

CEN-SAD was established in February 1998 by six countries, but since then its membership has grown to 25. One of its main goals is to achieve economic unity through the implementation of the free movement of people and goods in order to make the area occupied by member states a free trade area. At the international level, CEN-SAD gained observer status at the UN General Assembly in 2001 and concluded association and cooperation accords with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) as well as with UN specialized agencies and institutions such as UNDP, WHO, UNESCO, FAO, and the Permanent Interstate Committee for drought control in the Sahel.

All CEN-SAD member countries are also participating in other African economic unions, that have the aim to create a common African Economic Community. The envisioned Free Trade Area of CEN-SAD would be hard to practically implement, because it is overlapping with the envisioned Customs Unions of ECOWAS, ECCAS and COMESA and other trade blocs more advanced in their integration.

The African leaders sought to reconcile differences between neighbours Chad and Sudan over the Darfur conflict and boost Somalia's embattled Transitional Federal Government at a regional summit in Libya on June 3, 2007.[1]