Free trade to build a strong and integrated Africa
The establishment of a free trade zone at the continental level will contribute to mobilising energies, developing expertise and stimulating creative thinking, and responding to the real ambition of the youth to build a strong and integrated African continent. This was said by Enaam Mayara the President of the Kingdom of Morocco’s House of Councillors at the ongoing sessions of the Pan African Parliament in South Africa.
He said the processes of the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area are at the heart of the Kingdom of Morocco’s interests, given their importance in changing the continental development model, to become more productive and create opportunities for all. This important continental project, he said, will also enable the creation of a large number of job opportunities for the benefit of young people and save 30 million Africans out of extreme poverty and improve the income of 68 million people, while increasing continental wealth by 450 billion dollars.
“Therefore, and according to an ambitious methodology, my country has worked to contribute to build a continental model of common development through a set of integrating projects and programmes in a large number of countries of the continent, concerned with the development of infrastructure, university education and vocational training, enhancing food and energy sovereignty, health security, valorising internal resources, and strengthening industrial systems. “The Kingdom of Morocco is also working to exchange experiences and best practices related to economic and development programmes, alongside the strengthening of the financial and banking systems of a large number of the continent countries,” he said.
According to Mayara this enabled the increase in the total value of Morocco’s bilateral trade with African countries by 9.5 percent as an annual average, in parallel with the strengthening of Moroccan investments in Africa, which consists mainly of direct investments in sub- Saharan Africa, which made the kingdom of Morocco the first African investor in the African continent.
He indicated that in line with the spirit of cooperation, solidarity and synergy that is at the heart of the doctrine of cooperation between the Kingdom of Morocco and its African brothers, “my country is working on investing” in order to enhance continental food security by accompanying a group of African countries in building advanced agricultural strategies to strengthen food sovereignty, enhance the ability to compete in international agriculture and get the access to new markets. “My country is also working, through the Chérifien Office of Phosphates, to develop an advanced continental value chain that will enable Africa, within years, to have fair and equitable access to sufficient quantities of fertilisers. “My country adopts a clear vision to implement projects that will change the agricultural appearance of the continent and enhance its food security, the most prominent of which is the work to establish an industrial platform for the production of fertilisers in Ethiopia at a cost of 3.7 billion dollars and with a production capacity of about 2.5 million tonnes annually of fertilisers destined for the local and export markets in addition to opening a factory in Ghana, which will be dedicated to the manufacture of fertilisers, and a second factory in Nigeria, which will be dedicated to the manufacture of ammonia used in agricultural fertilisation.”
He told the continental legislators that on the energy level, his country and the Federal Republic of Nigeria are working on the completion of a gas pipeline between the two countries that passes through a group of countries in the west of the continent.
His country’s determination to develop cooperation and solidarity with all African brothers is matched only by its similarity to the success of all the institutional projects that the African Union is working to implement, foremost of which is strengthening the role of the Pan- African Parliament as an actual expression of the continent’s slogan; One Voice, One Continent.
Mayara added “This institutional development carried out by the African Union will not succeed without concerted joint efforts and strengthening unity and stability in all countries of the continent, according to a methodology that enables us to pass to the maximum development speed in a fair and equitable manner among all the components of our continental institutional family. “We are absolutely certain that the stage launched by the African Parliament by electing its current Bureau will be full of continental parliamentary achievements, institutional development of our African Parliament, and strengthening its performance and governance system”.