African efforts to expand trade both within and beyond the continent have this month included renewed focus on the Middle East and Caribbean, as well as calls from industry figures to expand international trade training and implementation for existing intra-African trade arrangements.
Trade bridge building
Media company Ventures Africa last week (5 July) shared a press release from the latest meeting of the Arab Africa Trade Bridges (AATB) Program’s board of governors, where a host of agreements were signed aimed at boosting economic growth in both Africa and the Middle East.
The meeting, held in Tunisia, yielded a letter of intent for renewal of Egypt’s membership of the organisation, which “aims to boost Egyptian exports, support various economic sectors, and implement a comprehensive work plan”.
That comes as the country’s newly appointed investment and trade minister, Hassan El-Khatib, outlined new plans to achieve a goal of US$100bn in annual exports that includes expanding training in export and trade skills, according to Daily News Egypt.
The International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation (IITC), African Export–Import Bank (Afeximbank) and the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), all of whom attended the meeting, also struck an agreement to support the Common African Agro-Parks (CAAPs) programme. The scheme aims to improve Africa’s “agricultural productivity and sustainability”.
Caribbean calling
Africa’s trade with the Caribbean could hit $1.8bn within the next four years, suggests joint research from the International Trade Centre (ITC) and Afreximbank. As reported by Uganda’s Independent, current trade between the two regions stands at $739m.
The two organisations shared their findings at the launch of another inter-regional trade initiative, the ‘Strengthening AfriCaribbean Trade and Investment’ project.
Services trade, particularly in the travel and transport sectors, offers a particularly strong area for potential growth, the ITC and Afreximbank say.
Professor Benedict Oramah, president of Afreximbank’s board of directors, said the project “aims to bridge the knowledge gap and build capacity among small and medium-sized enterprises, which are critical for the growth of Africa-Caribbean trade and investment”.
Among the two challenges identified for boosting the weak trade between the two regions – less than 3% of each region’s exports goes to the other – are high tariffs on processed goods in particular, as well as poor logistics. The ITC has pledged to examine how tariff reform could improve trade between the regions.
AfCFTA implementation efforts
Lawalley Cole, executive director of the Coalition on Media and Education for Development Africa Forum (CAFOR), has called on African nations to accelerate implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in an interview with the Ethiopian News Agency.
The AfCFTA could expand incomes on the continent by as much as $571bn and lift 50 million people out of poverty, according to research by the World Bank. It has already fostered the development of trade between some of its member nations, with Cameroon’s state-owned aluminium firm announcing this week that it had exported its first shipments to Algeria.
Cole has urged for the further implementation of the AfCFTA, which he said “will become the largest trade area in the entire world” if successful.
He also called for improved training of the continent’s young workforce to make the most of its trade potential. That demand might be met in part by Afreximbank, which announced yesterday that it would support a training programme aimed at helping African corporates to make the most of the AfCFTA.
Afreximbank’s group chief economist and research managing director, Yemi Kale, said the AfCFTA could change the continent “from a fractured, commodity-dependent group of economies to a vibrant, integrated single market of about 2 billion people with a combined GDP of about $3.4trn”, if fully exploited.
Training programmes could “empower African businesses to fully exploit the vast opportunities created by the AfCFTA”, he added.
ECOWAS junta struggles
One economic union in Africa making less optimistic noises, however, is the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which says it is struggling to make progress in talks with the countries of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger following their takeovers by military juntas.
Reuters reports that ECOWAS commission president Oumar Touray spoke at a summit of the group in Abuja, Nigeria to warn of the risk of collapse in the region.
It follows the signing of a confederation treaty between the three nations, now designating themselves the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), last week. The three countries left the ECOWAS bloc in “the culmination of our determined common will to reclaim our national sovereignty”.
Touray said ECOWAS was disappointed “with the lack of progress in engagements with the authorities” of the AES.
One beneficiary of Mali’s changing politics – which also include a turn away from western former allies – is Russian state-owned energy firm Rosatom, which signed three cooperation deals with the country yesterday (10 July).
Among the ideas under discussion between Mali and Rosatom are a “strategic project to build a Russian-designed low-power nuclear power plant in Mali”, as well as cooperation on solar power and mining.