AfCFTA giving trade information on the continent

THE world’s largest free trade area, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) has made significant progress on its implementation, key being the creation of the African Trade Observatory giving trade information on the continent.

A two-day workshop is underway on the sidelines of the Sixth Pan-African Parliament (PAP) Second Ordinary Session being held under the African Union Theme of the Year for 2023, The Year of AfCFTA: Accelerating the Implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area” in Midrand, South Africa, and will run up to June 2, 2023.

Realising the huge trade information gap existing on the continent, the AfCFTA sought to address this through the creation of a platform that gives out information for free.

The platform provides data pertaining to market sizes, market share and business partners in various sectors.

The continent should also move towards promotion of Intra-African investment.

It is high time we started looking at investing among ourselves. How do we facilitate investment within our continent because nothing significant is coming our way from the investors we were used to.

One of the success stories of the AfCFTA is the creation of Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS).

We are losing a lot of hard currency while trading among ourselves. We are setting up a PAPSS to allow traders to trade in local currencies meaning cheaper access to inputs and access to African products will be much easier.

Currently, when one has to pay for goods, the payment has to go through a third country outside Africa before the money comes back to Africa and this has proven expensive hence our move to establish the PAPSS.

Of note also, is the initiative to build capacities for women in processing.

The capacity building is to ensure the women in processing are capable of producing quality goods and also appreciate various existing instruments and protocols. Pan-African Parliament Plenary AfCTA