General Objectives of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (Part 5 of 8)

PanAfreeka’s Seven Main Themes of the African Continental Free Trade Area – Theme 4 

(Address sustainable and inclusive socio-economic challenges)

The future of Africa can either be progressive, remain stagnant or at worst regressive but since Africa is not one country, it is more likely to be a hybrid of these forecasts. However if the AU could have its way, Africa will be progressive. The 6^th aspiration of AU agenda 2063 alludes to creating an Africa, whose development is people-driven, relying on the potential of African people, especially its women and youth. This aspiration is further broken down into two goals i.e. a full gender equality in all spheres of life and the engagement and empowerment of youth and children (Ref-3).

A liberal market of 1.2 billion people with a gross domestic product of USD 2.5 trillion (Ref-04) can stimulate a whole lot of upstream and downstream activities that can definitely create a lot of opportunities for Africans and non-Africans of all spheres of life, however our belief is that while the African Continental Free Trade Area may be free so to speak, there has to be some intentional market interventions to ensure market forces do not make the socio economic challenges worse.  In other words, we believe that if left unchecked, it is possible for intra-African trade to grow in leaps and bounds while socio economic challenges stagnate or regress. For instance, there has to be a concerted effort that will ensure that the representation of women in free trade transactions at various levels are not only measured but also set up and positioned in such a manner that these base line measurements improve over time beyond such a time when the trade transactions per state party reflects the gender demographic of that state party. Furthermore, barriers to achieving growth in gender representation need to be identified and interventions need to be put in place to ensure that these are managed and/or resolved.

 

Similarly, the Continental Free Trade Area does offer several opportunities for the youth. The employment opportunity that Africa’s commodities industries offers are not enough to absorb all youths that are unemployed, however a free trade market that supplies goods and services to 1.2 billion people provides lots of employment and entrepreneurial opportunities for the youth (Ref-4). These opportunities will likely come from activities related to the promotion of industrial development both from the public sector (such as capital investment into public infrastructure that can help ease the logistical issues relating to the movement of goods and information) as well as the private sector (a boom in manufacturing of goods is expected considering that the Continental market size is larger than a typical domestic market and the benefits of the free trade Agreement are maximised when the  goods being traded is fully manufactured in a state party, in other words Made in Africa products for export are expected to significantly increase).

The skills and educational sector also has a role to play by ensuring that the youth are trained and educated with the knowledge and skillset that they can use to either enter the labour force as an employee or equipped to be empowered to be self-employed in the context of an intra-African market place.

 

References (Ref.) Agreement Establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area – African Union  https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/how-africa-can-feed-the-world/ https://au.int/en/agenda2063/aspirations African Continental Free Trade Area Question and Answers – United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (Africa Union) https://www.sacu.int/show.php?id=394

Useful Links (UL) https://au.int/en/agenda2063/overview The Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) in Africa (A Human Rights Perspective) – United Nations Economic Commission for Africa