Levious Chiukira on Customs and Trade

  The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) offers an opportunity for businesses to take advantage of vast market potential across the African continent. To maximize the benefits of AfCFTA, Africans need to unite and tackle the challenges that exist with the intention to have the Africa we want becoming a reality. the question is , Is Africa a nation or decimated nations at loggerheads? the answer to this question assist in the integration equation of our beloved continent.  The challenges include interalia - The fragmentation of markets due to different regulations, tariffs, and customs procedures across different RECs - The complexity of rules of origin and their different implementation across different RECs - The allegiance to former colonial powers among Lusophone, Francophone, and Anglophone countries within Africa that creates differences in regulatory standards across countries - The bureaucratic pathologies such as duplication of customs requirements, v...

By Levious Chiukira   Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) continue to face unwarranted barriers in cross-border trade under the current trading regime. Unless specific measures are taken to eliminate these barriers under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), SMEs will continue to face the same challenges. The  World Bank  estimates that if the AfCFTA's goals are fully realized, 50 million people could escape extreme poverty by 2035, and real income could rise by 9 per cent. Under deep integration, Africa's exports to the rest of the world would go up by 32 per cent by 2035, and intra-African exports would grow by 109 per cent, led by manufactured goods. However, these predictions were made without adequate policy interventions to facilitate SMEs to benefit from the establishment fully. Research by  International Trade Centre (2022)  highlighted that despite the excitement in capitals and overseas about the AfCFTA, only some African firms are awar...

  No Women No AfCFTA. Whose integration is it anyway? Africa, which covers approximately 30 million square kilometers, is the second-largest continent in the world. In 2010, its gross domestic product was approximately $1.6 trillion, compared with the U.S.’s $14.5 trillion GDP which is even three times smaller in geographical size. Given the challenges with continued failure in unification and development across the cross, the African leaders agreed to form the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) from the Pan Africanism perspective in a bid to come up with the Africa we want.   As an affirmation of their commitment to support Africa’s new path for attaining inclusive and sustainable economic growth and development African heads of state and government signed the 50th Anniversary Solemn Declaration during the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the formation of the OAU /AU in May 2013. The declaration marked the re-dedication of Africa towards the attainment of the Pan Af...

  The global COVID-19 pandemic is plunging the world into a socioeconomic and financial crisis of an unprecedented scale, in addition to the acute health crisis. The crisis has exposed and exacerbated vulnerabilities and inequalities in both developing and developed countries, deepening poverty and exclusion and pushing the most vulnerable even further behind. The shattering effects have been more visible to the African continent which has consolidated its energies in the creation of an African Economic Community (AEC) prior to the eruption of the pandemic in December 2019 in China.   Africa doesn’t have the luxury of time and cannot follow the traditional path to economic integration. Africa has to abandon the EU linear model of integration and create our own model which is acquainted with the peculiar African challenges. It worth to mention that the integration of Europe happened at the time the world financial systems had the capacity to fund the initiatives and reconst...

  The launched African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA ) which houses a GDP of USD 2.5 trillion and a population of 1.2 billion people has the been regarded as the answer to African intra-regional trade challenges. The AfCFTA comes at a time where African economies have shown little capacities to transform their economies through trade as there has been little progress on the diversification of exports and value addition to the exports of primary goods manly minerals and agricultural produce. The AfCFTA comes as one of the flagship projects of African Union Agenda 2063. Agenda 2063 is a strategic framework for the socio- economic transformation of the continent over the next 50 years. It builds on, and seeks to accelerate the implementation of past and existing continental initiatives for growth and sustainable development. Key to Agenda 2063 is epitomising sustainable development as a key result of African integration. There are other     key programmes and initi...

Africa has rolled out the African Free Trade Area which has been bestowed with what I assume are high expectations. As I write the AfCFTA is being showered with praises as being historic and going to stimulate and improve the intra-African trade.   I remain pessimistic about AfCFTA and the figures being thrown around as its potential achievements. Protagonists has continued to use statistics quoted in policy papers presented at different conferences and to me most of these figures and targets are out of reach for the AfCFTA and when times comes it will make this project a failure. AfCFTA is comes at a time tariff reductions have failed and nationalism is on the rise as nations are fighting the crippling devastating effects of COVID-19. As the debate of free trade areas rages on without a conclusive stance, what has won is the push for trade liberalism which the forces I shall call the ‘invisible actors’ dominating the discourses and research around the continental free trade area. ...

The continent celebrates the historic achievement of an integrated Africa through the establishment of AfCFTA which came after not a smooth sailing. The continental free trade area comes as result of the vision of the African leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere. The basis of the AfCFTA emanated from the need to have an integrated prosperous continent with the African people owning the continental projects and taking advantage of the untapped resources of women and the youth. For any development to be successful and have a meaning the process of regional integration must be first and foremost be driven by the domestic people.   The momentous accomplishment comes at a time when Europe is negotiating the exit of Britain out of the European Union (EU).   The major partners in the integration process have been the West through the developmental agencies and EU resulting in the adoption of the European model of integration being utilised for an African set up. As Af...

A Non-Tariff Barrier is any obstacle to international trade that is not an import or export duty. They may take the form of import quotas, subsidies, customs delays, technical barriers, or other systems preventing or impeding trade. Achieving the stated aim of the AfCFTA, ‘to create one African market’, will require eliminating of such NTBs.   As we celebrate the launch of AfCFTA , it is critical for both academics and professionals to start assessing the new kid on the bloc. Any criticism should be re4garded as constructive and not a wish list for the failure AfCFTA. As the secretary general of AfCFTA and team are in Ghana, the question is , has enough ground work been done to ensure the smooth implementation of AfCFTA.   Africa looks forward to the elimination of poverty through trade as the intra African trade is expected to increase from the current 15%. AfCFTA, which in the long-term is still likely to have a markedly positive impact on the intra-African trade of go...

With all eyes on the implementation of the historic African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), the question which needs to be answered is, whose integration is Africa pursuing? Researches have shown that Africa intra trade still remain low at approximately 15% of its total trade. This tells us that we are not yet prepared to trade among ourselves. The continental free trade is a result of the vision by African leaders to ensure the future of Africa is transferred into the hands and ownership of the Africans. It can be traced back to the Lagos Platform of Action of 1980 which envisioned the development of Africa through self-sufficiency. By 1980 the African leaders by then had noticed that the over reliance of Africa on exportation of raw materials was leaving it at the mercy of the developed countries that were benefiting from the relationship and was not sustainable. The need to industrialise Africa was agreed upon and mechanism were put into place to ensure that Africa redef...

  With the launch of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA)     on the 1st of January 2021 the long wait was over and it was the start of a new era.   The AfCFTA will cover a market of 1.2 billion people and a gross domestic product (GDP) of $2.5 trillion, across all 55 member States of the African Union. In terms of numbers of participating countries, AfCFTA will be the world’s largest free trade area since the formation of the World Trade Organization.   It comes against a background of COVID-19 which has disrupted the normal trading routine leaving industries hanging on the balance across Africa. The new business normal brought in by the effects of COVID-19 will result in the AfCFTA having to be adjusted to ensure that its intentions and objectives are realised.   Most African economies are sustained by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) which are mostly owned by Africans. Research have shown that SMEs constitute the greatest proportion of...