That Africa may Prosper!!
The singular promise of AfCFTA
1st January 2021 marked a new beginning in the African Trade story. One with so many prospects but also with so many probable pitfalls. We can imagine the beaming smile of “Mama Africa” after she birthed the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) with its enormous possibilities for a Continent that has finally decided to take more control of its natural resources and launch into a phase that will place its 1.3Billion people as the largest single market population in the world.
A CRACK IN THE DOOR OR WINDOWS OPEN WIDE
The AfCFTA clearly presents an opportunity for Africa to dramatically drive the poverty narrative into its past and propel hundreds of millions of people on the Continent into a future of sustainable living conditions within the next 25 years. Depending on how the Agreement is executed amongst the participating countries and the institutionalization of its supporting policies by local legislation in member countries, as well as the deliberate funding of critical logistics infrastructure to facilitate easy movement of goods across borders;
the Trade bloc could be just “a crack in the door” or a “wide-open window’ bringing in a rush of the clean fresh air of prosperity.
WHAT DO WE DO TO MAXIMISE AfCFTA?
At Bahranda, we suggest that the African Union (AU) should continue the role of nurturing its intellectual offspring by energizing the loyalty of member countries to the agreement through the encouragement of the following;
Ø Keeping member Countries focused on massively reducing Poverty and increasing purchasing power by promoting local legislation to support economic policies that create jobs and grow wages in order that the large population on the Continent will be able to support an internal market with “Currency Capacity” before we conquer an external (global) market with a “Diversity Deficiency”.
Ø Urging member countries to relinquish National ego in an attempt to gain pre-eminence in any particular area of ongoing production and navigating them into adopting a focus on their areas of comparative advantage in order to cause the cost of primary and secondary products to drop sharply. For instance, Nigeria could focus on the primary products for which it has a comparative advantage over the rest of Africa e.g Yam and Cassava.
Ø Sustaining the political will to realise that short-term gains obtained by sidestepping “Rule of Origin” criteria in the AfCFTA rules would ultimately lead to the erasure of those gains to all countries. Non-African donor countries and the blitz of “Infrastructure Diplomacy” should not be allowed to influence the sale of our future prosperity for the proverbial “bowl of porridge”.
Ø Facilitating the investment in logistics infrastructure in order to facilitate the movement of traded goods which would be critical to the success of AfCFTA.
This is our moment and at Bahranda, we urge all Africans to seize it. More than at any time in our long history has a decision held such a weighty impact for such a large number of people.
AfCFTA may mean many things to different people but in the simplest of terms it is the promise of a Prince called “PROSPERITY” and that is the minimum we expect.
Lenin@bahranda.com
