Ghana has hosted a three-day summit on the African continental free trade agreement in a process to discuss Africa’s next step progress.
The business summit which happened between January 26-28, 2023, focused on how to step up the implementation of the intra-trade agreement deal.
“The protocol shall establish regulations. For digitization of Africa’s economy, it shall set out market access. It shall also include, uh, payments as well as issues related to data transfer and data movement across jurisdictions in Africa”, said AFCFTA Secretariat.
The African continent free trade area gives countries on the continent access to a market of more than 1.3 billion people in Africa. So far, 44 out of 54 Africans have ratified the trade pack.
Eight African countries were the first to export their goods under the AFCFTA-guided trade initiative last year. Experts say the deficits in infrastructure on the continent, including air transport, are slowing down business.
“We do not have enough warehouses to transport cargo between stations in Africa. There are a number of infrastructure issues that we need to address. It’s not just the underdeveloped infrastructure across Africa” said official.
That is still a challenge. The free movement of people on the continent is yet to be fully realized. Many people still face difficulties in getting visas to travel within the continent.
“The goods cannot flow without the people. The people must be the face of the African continent of the free trade area and so to the extent that we are not moving as fast as we would have liked, even on the African continent of free trade area itself, it takes us a step back”, said an official.
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Business leaders have urged African governments to revive their immigration laws and also improve the ease of doing business in Africa.
“We should scale up efforts to mobilize domestic resources to support our development agenda, including the productive. We need to broaden and diversify financial products’’, said President of Ghana Nana Akufo Addo.
African governments want to tap into diaspora investments. It has been more than 3 years since the AFCFTA was launched, but trade among African countries has barely taken off business bosses hope events like this could help shape policies at the government level to allow the full benefits of the trade deal to be realized.
