AfCFTA – “From a business perspective, we should see this crisis as an opportunity”

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, officials in Africa are now resigned to delaying the launch of what is set to become the world’s largest free-trade bloc, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) (see Politico, 24 March). Trade talks aimed at launching the bloc on 1 July are now on hold. However, the intention is still for the AfCFTA to launch this year, with the hope that talks could resume by the end of May.

The pandemic is predicted to have a profound effect on economies worldwide, with the UN scaling back its projection of Africa’s GDP growth this year from 3.2% to 1.8%.

But according to Wamkele Mene, recently elected as the first Secretary-General of the AfCFTA, “Africa should not despair and fall into despondency. From a trade perspective, we should see this crisis as an opportunity – through the AfCFTA we have an opportunity to reconfigure our supply chains [and] to reduce reliance on others.”

According to Politico, perhaps the biggest challenge will be to ensure that the benefits of the AfCFTA reach the small-scale businesses and farmers that form the backbone of most of the continent’s economies. Fatma Ben Rejeb, CEO of the Pan-African Farmers’ Organization, says “What is most important is how we are going to guarantee the involvement of family farmers in the whole value chain. In our own countries we still have enormous challenges to access markets for smallholder farmers. […] It needs to be a bottom-up discussion and not a top-down discussion.”