A highly anticipated coordination meeting between the African Union (AU) and the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) will take place in Niamey on July 08, 2019. The Summit is one concrete measure of the latest round of institutional reforms of the AU, initiated by its previous chairperson President Kagame. Discussions will be centered on the subsidiarity principle: what level and organization is best placed to deal with regional policy making, problem-solving or norm-setting? But is this enough to ensure coordination given the multitude of other (and overlapping) regional organizations in Africa? Strengthening African regionalism may be less a matter of engaging the RECs, and more about solving specific regional problems, where the RECs are but one of a set of regional actors.