Trade and Opportunities

AfCFTA can benefit Africa’s youth and women and increase Sino-African cooperation

- Benard Ayieko

The new year has come with good tidings in Africa despite the devastating economic effects of COVID-19 on the global economy. On the first day of 2021, African countries officially opened their markets under the continental free trade agreement for duty-free trading of goods and services across borders.

Coincidentally, on this same day, the UK’s much talked about Brexit deal kicked off, officially marking the end of the UK-EU relationship as it was commonly known. Initially, Africa’s free trade agreement was scheduled to commence on July 1, 2020; but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was postponed to give African countries ample opportunity to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

A free trade agreement is an accord among countries whose main objective is to lower barriers to imports and exports among themselves. Under the auspices of such a free trade policy, goods and services are traded across international borders with little or no government tariffs, quotas, subsidies or prohibitions that may scuttle their exchange.

The launch of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is historic because it’s the largest free trade area in the world by virtue of the number of participating countries since the development of the World Trade Organization. The agreement establishing AfCFTA was signed by leaders from 44 African countries at the African Union Summit in March 2018 in Kigali, Rwanda. Thus far, 34 of the 54 African countries have ratified the trade pact. AfCFTA will create a single market for goods and services, facilitate the movement of people, promote industrial development and sustainable and inclusive socio-economic growth and help resolve the multiple membership issue in line with the AU’s Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want.