Levious Chiukira on Customs and Trade

  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...

'Morten Bøås argues that African integration schemes have been detached from African reality, and in order to gain credibility integration organisations should be reattached to the real dynamic forces of the African economy, which according to Bøås can be found among the entrepreneurs of the informal sector (Bøås 2001, 37). This is a powerful statement which can make or break #AfCFTA. Until Africa understands that her people are in the periphery of her economies, all regional initiatives will remain foreign to the people of Africa. The existence of any regional integration initiative is to create the sense of regionalism and ownership of the process. The ideal epitomisation of the African Agenda 2063 was to have a self-sufficient and self-reliant continent resulting in the empowerment of its citizens. This is stemming from the Lagos Platform of Action of 1981 which sought to reduce Africa dependence on the West and industrialise the continent. Is the Pan African ideology central...

The recent launched Pan African continental free trade has been bestowed with a role to stimulate the growth of intra African trade. One of Africa`s underexploited and under researched industry id the service sector. With the goal to grow intra-Africa trade AfCFTA has already concluded on the Protocol on Trade in Services.   The AfCFTA Protocol on Trade in Services, among other things, seeks to create a single liberalised market for trade in services for the continent. Previous efforts under the existing regional economic communities failed to fully recognise and support the growth of service industry in Africa resulting in the concentration on the products and tariff cuts. The significance of the industry sector cannot be downplayed in Africa and it requires policy support and political will from the leaders.   The Protocol is the first endeavour to liberalise intra-African trade in services. Services are essential to facilitate trade across borders, they are essential fo...

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...