AfCFTA: Year 2: Achieving some milestones with sting support by various stakeholders for a greater materialization of commitments by African leaders

As the year 2022 draws to a close in a few hours, it is relevant for a comprehensive review of the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement.?

?At the level of the African Union, senior officials are multiplying consultations and implementation strategies in partnership regional economic communities. As for the AfCFTA Secretariat, it is pursuing its agenda of raising awareness and communicating on this vast program, by broadening its audience to non-continental institutional , the private sector, and civil society?stakeholders.

It is true that many hopes have been raised for a very rapid implementation of this agreement, however some apprehensions remain as to the real materialization of commitments made by the signatory countries.?

?During the year 2022, several forums, videoconferences, workshops and seminars were organized and focused on certain topics, including those relating to rules of origin, intellectual property rights, the panafrican system of financing transactions, the dismantling of tariffs, the importance of economic and trade intelligence through statistical data, information as well as the realization of macroeconomic and sectoral studies.

?This article comes at a crucial moment in Africa's economic evolution in a new context including the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the conflicts in some regions of Africa (West, Central and Southern), the change in the constitutional order in some countries in West Africa, the stammering at the global level towards a new economic order.??As an American journalist from the New York Times recently said, "we are witnessing a jostling of nations and continents at the level of Africa", both politically and economically. This context inevitably provides an opportunity for Africa to test its resilience, in absolute terms, and also to prepare for the new challenges that will loom on the horizon throughout this decade.

?As a reminder, the establishment of a continental free trade area?will have proved its worth after two years of implementation, and we can ask ourselves today what has been done since then, what remains to be done, and what are the conditions for success in accelerating the process of economic integration at the continental Level.

At a forum on the Builders of the African Economy held on September 29, 2022 in Abidjan, C?te d’Ivoire, we focused on "How can This Continental agreement could contribute to the emergence of African countries? To this end, we highlighted the issues related to the development of African countries, economic zones, and finally those of the emergence of African countries, including issues of growth and their benefits, the challenges of financing infrastructure projects that should accompany national, regional and continental economic policies, and then draw a parallel with the experience of European countries, which took more than a quarter of a century to achieve a real economic, commercial, financial and social Europe.??Finally, a few avenues were identified to overcome certain constraints by capitalizing on the multiple assets, and the degree of industrialization to create value through innovative products and services.

?On what has been done for the past two years, Mwankele Mene, Secretary General of the AfCFTA took his pilgrim's baton to mobilize all stakeholders for effective implementation, through several activities including training workshops, thematic seminars, conferences on ongoing programs, video conferences etc.. He and his team have been a catalyst for the realization of the commitments made by African leaders, with the spirit of a seasoned negotiator now hovering over this promising new ecosystem.?

Many articles, documents, videos and reports have been published on the AfCFTA, starting with the African Union Commission, which through the intermediary of Commissioner Albert M. Muchanga in charge of trade and industry, a great champion of the AfCFTA has set the tone and the pace for many months.??

?From the outset, the stakes are enormous, the challenges multiple, research, mobilization, evaluation of financial resources available for development financing in Africa, and finally the evidence of strengthening resilience to the pandemic of COVID-19 which continues and becomes increasingly elusive. Approaches and decisions have been announced for the production of vaccines and customized production equipment, but so far nothing is on the horizon.

?Although African countries have committed to trade among themselves, the current level of trade is relatively low. In the case of C?te d'Ivoire, it is sufficient to analyze the mapping of trade over the past five years to note that intra-WAEMU trade is very important due to certain factors, proximity, currency and convergence policies, and the nature of intra-ECOWAS trade shows the importance of imports from Nigeria and neighboring countries.?

?However, the fact remains that more can be done by carefully exploiting certain market niches from which the Ivorian private sector is not yet benefiting. The recent South Africa - C?te d'Ivoire Economic Forum which took place on December 2 and 3, 2021 at the Sofitel Hotel Ivoire in Abidjan, was very revealing if one retains the lessons that have encouraged partnership, the search for opportunities in a reciprocal manner, the consideration of the pillars of national development plans of both countries.

Moreover, it must be recognized that the benefits will not be felt overnight, and that there is still some way to go to see concrete actions on the ground.

?It is for this reason that it is necessary to underline the crucial role of the AfCFTA Secretariat which, under the leadership of Wankele Neme, has started a titanic work, a major challenge for this pan-African institution when we know that African institutions remain in a state of lethargy after having announced their ambitions with great pomp and circumstance, because the means do not follow, the lack of vision and the will to move the lines. ... a partial assessment through all the actions carried out in almost all the countries across the continent.?

This is already encouraging but much remains to be done.?

Based on the experiences of regions such as Europe and/or Asia, Africa should not miss this initiative.?

Another lesson and not the least lies in the capacity of the African private sector to seize these opportunities which are of all kinds: export of agricultural products, food and agri-food products in the context of food security, particularly in terms of industrialized products of everyday consumption and cosmetics.

?The African private sector must intensify its ownership of this dynamic, its expectations are known to all political leaders and administrative authorities, covering the issue of red tape, tariff and non-tariff barriers, facilitating trade by letting the rules of competition play, and protecting property rights, factors of success in the implementation of the AfCFTA.?The sheer volume of trade and investment transactions provided by Afreximbank in terms of projects, i.e. US$42.1 billion, shows that there are immense opportunities.

Today, Afreximbank, which remains an institutional financial leverage on a continental scale has undertaken commendable initiatives to encourage the African private sector to take advantage of its financial resources and project financing tools and mechanisms.

For more than four years, the African Union Commission and the Export-Import Bank have been actively involved in the organization of the Intra-African Trade Fair (IATF), in Cairo, Egypt in 2018, and in Durban, South Africa in 2021.??According to the report provided by His Excellency Olesogun Obasanjo, Chairman of the IATF 2021 Advisory Council Board and former President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the last edition saw the participation of more countries, 61 of which 46 were African countries, 1161 exhibitors and 31,400 participants (11,828 attended in person and 19,556 participated virtually via the IATF virtual platform -?www.intrafricantradefair.com/en/iatf-virtual .

?Overall, participants came from 128 countries, including exhibitors, visitors, buyers, delegates and speakers. For the 3rd edition of the IATF, which will take place from 21 to 27 November 2023, preparations are well underway and ambitions are even higher.??All stakeholders involved in the dynamics of the AfCFTA including the African private sector should be interested in it because it is the premier platform of intra-African trade for years to come. Headquarters of major African companies are integrating the AfCFTA dimension into their new market conquest strategies, which will change the game in terms of competition and business performance on the continent.

?As for the Regional Economic Communities (RECs), they have multiplied awareness-raising activities, including videoconferences, awareness-raising workshops, and thematic workshops on rules of origin, the need to create regional value chains, the importance of cross-border trade, and the role of women and youth in the economy, in boosting intra-African trade, all topics that are not exhausted as the issues are numerous, and to name a few, the business environment, the issue of industrialization, technological innovations, scientific research, processing of raw materials, food security etc..?

?What remains to be done is immeasurable and covers several axes, angles and dimensions. First, the respect of the commitments of the signatory countries of the agreement, the rigorous implementation of the provisions of the agreement, the establishment of regional strategies to pool economies of scale and value chains, the re-dimensioning of public policies, national development plans, the implementation of country strategies for better exploitation of business opportunities, the inclusion of youth and women in development and business programs, and regional and intra-regional strategic alliances.??

This is why the private sector must be very alert to the blockages and constraints to the development of intra-regional and intra-continental trade.?

For the time being, Year 2 of the AfCFTA?can be considered to have made very significant progress in terms of certain constraints, with the gradual involvement of the continent's institutional and private sector stakeholders as a leverage. It is at this price that Africa could progress with certain shortcuts avoiding the mistakes of other economic zones.

Gerard AMANGOUA