Africa took a giant stride along the path of increased economic co-operation, with the launch of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in March 2018. The move was widely hailed as a major milestone towards the long-standing goal of creating a unified continental market. AfCFTA is hailed as one of the most exciting new developments on the continent, with the potential to connect African countries from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, and from Cape Town to Cairo. By liberalising trade, AfCFTA will help countries grow economies and create jobs. If fully implemented, AfCFTA would see the creation of the world’s largest free trade area since inauguration of the World Trade Organisation in 1995, boasting a domestic market of more than 1.2 billion people, and a collective gross domestic product of $2.6 trillion. Effective implementation of AfCFTA would be transformational. The African Development Bank has forecast that elimination of bilateral tariffs on goods and services would increase intra-African trade by 15 per cent. Yet significant barriers remain beyond tariffs. Without a focus on implementation, we could see a trade agreement that is largely unusable. Many African countries are members of several regional economic communities — the East African Community, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, the Southern African Development Community and the Economic Community of West African States — applying different rules of origin, trading standards and cross-border procedures, all making it costly to trade. The World Bank Doing Business report for 2020 shows that while it...

he purpose of national economic reform is to change the structure and overall direction of an economy. Reforms therefore can affect the amount of resources available to a country. They can also affect human rights. South Africa desperately needs to reform its economy. Its capacity to deal with its tragic problems of unemployment, poverty and inequality is diminishing. State owned enterprises like the power utility Eskom, public transport group Prasa and South Africa Airways, are failing to deliver adequate services. They are also draining public resources away from more productive and socially beneficial purposes. And the country’s economy is too carbon intensive. It needs to transition to less carbon intensive forms of production and consumption. The South African government’s proposed responses to these challenges are controversial. They involve job losses and cuts in social services. Government claims that over time the reforms will yield more jobs, better services and a growing economy that is environmentally sustainable. Unfortunately, while the short term costs are clear, the long term benefits are uncertain. Even if they arrive, they may not benefit the groups bearing the short term losses. The same is true about the alternatives. For example, the mining sector’s efforts to protect the coal industry may preserve jobs but at the cost of the long term health of children. Efforts by trade union to preserve wages for public sector workers may mean fewer jobs in the public sector for today’s students and learners. In short, all these options may produce substantial benefits....

- integration agenda has been launched in Kigali, Rwanda. The campaign aims at creating opportunities for East African Community (EAC) citizens to express themselves on how they feel after 20 years of the integration and what should be done for it to work better for their lives in the coming years. Rwanda’s Director General of African Cooperation, Diyana Gitera said the campaign was an important part of EAC’s 20th anniversary activities and that it will increased communication and awareness as it engages the most critical stakeholders—the youth, on an exciting path towards EAC’s integration. Gitera said: “It is my hope that the campaign will turn out to be a milestone that creates a new momentum to inspire East Africans to embrace and deepen the integration process”. She cautioned participants on the challenges that will be equally part of the narrative throughout the campaign. “Our wish is to appreciate the positive impact of the EAC, but also and perhaps more importantly, correct the course wherever necessary,” she said. She reminded the youth that the short film competition entailed in the campaign was meant to enable them to capture real stories on the EAC while demonstrating how more innovative EAC could be to get to the ‘EAC we want’. EAC Deputy Secretary General in charge of Planning and Infrastructure, Eng Steven Mlote, said that in the last 20 years, the community had witnessed commendable growth in trade, infrastructure and better policies. He added that regional social cohesion needs to be improved. “We...

NAIROBI (Reuters) - The greater East Africa region could gain two million new jobs if the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) - due to start in July - works as planned, according to a study the United Nations released on Thursday. The AfCFTA, which is the biggest trading bloc in the world after the WTO, is designed to bring together Africa’s 55 countries into a single market of 1.3 billion people with an annual economic output of over $3.4 trillion. That will drive industrialisation, the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) said in the report, although the planned removal of tariffs on more than 90% of goods alone will not be enough. Officials must make sure businesses can move goods freely across borders and customs rules and procedures are consistent, the study warned. “What will have a big impact is making sure our borders operate seamlessly,” said Frank Matsaert, the head of Trade Mark East Africa, an organisation that promotes free trade in the region and co-produced the report with UNECA. Massive red tape and delays have crippled past attempts to integrate economies on the continent through existing smaller trade blocs like the East African Community. The 14 countries in the greater Eastern African region have some of the world’s fastest growing economies, such as Ethiopia, but the region suffers massive trade deficits. Importing large amounts of finished goods puts pressure on national currencies and hurts local industries, which are operating 20-40% below capacity because imports are cheaper, the...

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NAIROBI, March 5 (Xinhua) -- Trademark East Africa, a regional trade promotion agency, said on Thursday it will raise 16.3 billion shillings (about 160 million U.S. dollars) to promote the development of green transport and logistics corridors in the eastern African region. Anthony Mveyange, director of the research and learning, Trademark East Africa, told a trade forum in Nairobi that it will source the funding from international development agencies to ensure that the transport sector in the region reduces its carbon footprint. "We will partner with national governments to implement measures that incentivize the adoption of green transport mechanisms in the eastern African region," Mveyange said during the launch of a report produced jointly by United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and Trademark East Africa in Nairobi. Mveyange noted that the region is served with two key transport corridors that link the area to the rest of the world. The northern transport corridor links Kenya's port of Mombasa to Uganda and South Sudan, while the central transport corridor runs from Tanzania's port of Dar es Salaam and serves Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Mveyange added that the transport sector is one of the key sources of greenhouse gas emissions hence the need to promote green methods of transportation. He noted that regional integration has facilitated cross border trade meaning the volume of goods being transported has also increased. "We want to counter the emission of pollution caused by more vehicles on the road as well as...

The greater East Africa region could gain two million new jobs if the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) - due to start in July - works as planned, according to a study the United Nations released on Thursday. The AfCFTA, which is the biggest trading bloc in the world after the WTO, is designed to bring together Africa’s 55 countries into a single market of 1.3 billion people with an annual economic output of over $3.4 trillion.That will drive industrialisation, the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) said in the report, although the planned removal of tariffs on more than 90 per cent of goods alone will not be enough.Officials must make sure businesses can move goods freely across borders and customs rules and procedures are consistent, the study warned.“What will have a big impact is making sure our borders operate seamlessly,” said Frank Matsaert, the head of Trade Mark East Africa, an organisation that promotes free trade in the region and co-produced the report with UNECA.Massive red tape and delays have crippled past attempts to integrate economies on the continent through existing smaller trade blocs like the East African Community.The 14 countries in the greater Eastern African region have some of the world’s fastest growing economies, such as Ethiopia, but the region suffers massive trade deficits. Importing large amounts of finished goods puts pressure on national currencies and hurts local industries, which are operating 20-40 per cent below capacity because imports are cheaper, the report said.Betty Maina, Kenya’s...

Nairobi, 6 March 2010 (ECA)- The implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in Eastern Africa could result in welfare gains amounting to USD 1.8 billion for East Africa, boosting intra-African exports by more than USD 1.1 billion and creating more than 2 million new jobs, says a new report. This report, entitled: “Creating a Unified Regional Market - Towards the Implementation of The African Continental Free Trade Area in East Africa” jointly published by the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and Trademark East Africa, was launched yesterday in Nairobi, Kenya. The launch event was attended by more than 130 experts, including Ministers, ambassadors, government officials, trade economists, university lecturers, development partners and youth and women’s representatives from Kenya, Burundi, South Sudan, Somaliland, Tanzania, Rwanda and Ethiopia. Betty Maina, Kenya’s minister for trade and industrialisation, explained that her country pursues growth in trade by identifying different markets to its products. She stressed that to maximise benefits from the AfCFTA, greater attention must be geared towards supply chains in agricultural commodities and processed food products to scale it up to the continental level. “We need to up our game and I am glad that large numbers of young people enter the food processing industry, which provides a lot of jobs for our youth”, she said. Stephen Karingi, Director Regional Integration and Trade Division at the ECA, who also attended the event, said that by 2040 the AfCFTA has the potential to increase the value of agricultural and food...