Africa free trade area framework signing set for next month
THE signing of the framework agreement establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area is set for next month when Heads of State meet for an extra-ordinary summit in Rwanda.
This follows protracted negotiations over a record period of about two years and two months, since the launching of the negotiations on June 15, 2015 which effectively started in February 2016.
Attached to the CFTA Agreement will be the protocols on trade in goods, trade in services, and dispute settlement. The protocol on trade in goods will have a number of annexes, covering rules of origin, non-tariff barriers, technical standards, health standards, customs, trade facilitation, transit trade, and trade remedies.
“A few outstanding issues remain to be sorted out, and legal scrubbing has to be done: but there should be enough time up to March 21, to get all this done.
“The CFTA will boost intra-Africa trade, creating jobs and incomes and improving welfare,” said Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) director for Trade, Customs and Monetary Affairs Dr Francis Mangeni.
Estimates back in 2014 were that the CFTA would double intra-Africa trade by the year 2022 over the 2014 baseline.
With a population of more than 1 billion people and a median age of 19,3, a combined GDP of $ 3,4 trillion, 60 percent of the world’s arable land, consumer and business-to-business spending already at $ 3,9 trillion and projected to reach $ 5 trillion by 2025, highest returns on investment in the world, some of the largest deposits of strategic minerals, Africa is a growth pole of the global economy and a player in global peace and security.
At their recent ordinary summit on January 28, 2018, the African Heads of State launched the Single African Air Transport Market, with 23 countries participating, covering more than 70 percent of air travel in Africa.
They concluded also a protocol to facilitate free movement of people in Africa. Together with the CFTA, these three flagships programs represent quick progress under Africa’s long-term vision, Agenda 2063.
The agenda has 12 flagship programs, which aim to transform Africa into a more integrated, peaceful and prosperous continent by the year 2063. It should now be difficult to doubt that Africa is serious about economic integration.
Integrating 55 countries and disparate polities of the African continent under the auspices of the Organisation for African Unity from 1963 to 2002, and thereafter the African Union, with eight regional economic communities (RECs) as building blocs, is the largest integration project in the history of humankind.
It is no mean task. It will require continuous sharpening of technical, diplomatic, mobilisational and organisational skills.
The CFTA comes on the heels of yet another African milestone, that is, the Comesa-EAC-Sadc Tripartite Free Trade Area, concluded on June 10, 2015 covering 27 countries.
It makes up half of the African continent; which has supported the negotiation and conclusion of the CFTA, through inspiration and motivation, experience and documentation.
About half of the CFTA negotiators had negotiated the Tripartite FTA, and brought with them text and insights.
A number of CFTA Annexes were drawn from the Tripartite instruments, and were concluded fairly quickly in the negotiations, especially those on nontariff barriers, technical and health standards, customs, trade remedies, and dispute settlement.