The African Continental Free Trade Area is an ambitious trade pact to form the world’s largest free trade area by creating a single market for goods and services of almost 1.3bn people across Africa and deepening the economic integration of Africa.
The trade area could have a
combined gross domestic product of around $3.4 trillion, but achieving its full
potential depends on significant policy reforms and trade facilitation measures
across African signatory nations.
Private sector leaders across the continent, yesterday, demanded the immediate takeoff of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), saying the scheme must translate from an idea to a real deal to create the needed impact on regional trade.
The business leaders spoke at the ongoing second edition of
the Feed Africa Summit (Dakar 2) held at the Abdou Diouf Centre for
International Conference, Dakar, the political seat of Senegal. They said the
intra-African supply chain processes must be unlocked and liberalised to
achieve food sufficiency in the region.
Those who shared this thought at the CEO Roundtable included
the Chairman of Flour Mills of Nigeria Plc, John Coumantaros; President of
Ferme de la Teranga, Gora Seck and the President of CTC Group, Ahmed
Abdellatif.
Others are Vice Chairman of ETG, Birju Patel; Rita Zniber of
Diana Holdings; her counterpart at Dance Africa Corporation, Gerald Mahinda and
Kenya’s top investment banker and politician, Polycarp Igathe.
This position comes as food sovereignty for Africa ceases
attention at the summit organised by the African Development Bank (AfDB). With
funding being highlighted as a major hurdle that must be surmounted to achieve
food sufficiency on a sustainable basis, AfDB said it is committing $10 billion
to its feed Africa project in the next five years to make the continent the
food basket of the world.
Igathe, who spoke passionately about the need to unlock the
potential of Africa and address the logistics bottlenecks as necessary actions
to achieving the continent’s tall ambition, said the African trade agreement
“needs to move from paper to reality” as a matter of urgency to enable Africans
to trade with Africans seamlessly.
He listed some of the constraints facing intra-African trade
to include infrastructure and logistics, saying the continent urgently needs
policies that facilitate free movement. Igathe called for a review of fiscal
frameworks across the continents, insisting that incentives, and not penalties,
drive the world.
“We need to improve the investment climate, tackle
rent-seeking and harmonise standards,” the ex-Kenya City deputy governor said.
Mahinda, a South African, said AfCFTA should kick off immediately to strengthen
African trade ties as he called on leaders across the board to stop
highlighting the differences among different countries that make up the region
but “emphasize the commonalities”.
The panelist also called for more collaboration among
private sector players on alternative energy development. Coumantaros, in like
manner, noted that leveraging science and technology would help in mitigating
the consequences of changing climate on food production, processing and
distribution.
According to the Flour Mills Chairman, Africa must double
its food production in the next 25 years to avert a major crisis. He called for
more investment in agronomic services to increase yields.
To give farmers access to affordable alternative energy, he
advocated the local production of solar panels to reduce the cost of access to
alternative energy for local farmers.
In her intervention, Liberian Minister of Agriculture,
Jeanine Cooper, regretted that Africa had to wait for the Russia-Ukraine War to
begin to look inward.
According to her, food sufficiency is not enough as long as
African countries are not in control of the production, processing and
distribution of the food they consume – a position that echoed the dominant
talking point of the summit.
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