Informal economy - factor strengthening or weakening regional integration in Sub-Saharan Africa

It is estimated that the informal sector represents around 43% of the official GDP in Africa - so it is almost the same as the formal sector. The problematic of the informality raises directly very important questions - how to judge the informality, as an example of "social capital" in motion, effectively helping millions to survive or predatory activity, based on policy discrepancies, undermining the possibility of sustainable development. As a last sheet-anchor or poison for the African economies? In the article I will try to answer the question of how the informal cross-border trade can be judged from the point of view of its influence on the official regional integration in Africa - that "spaghetti bowl" continent, full of regional institutions and agreements, where informal cross-border trade can be, according to some estimated, sometimes even more important than the formal regional trade. I will begin with a synthetic presentation of the regional integration problematic and informal economy in general and in Africa in particular. I will try then to come through the pros and the cons of informal cross-border trade in terms of regional integration to the reflections, encouraging to redefinition of the basic concepts of the article - informality and regional integration. Showing that they are not necessarily what the common sense approach would suggest