Why execution of continental free trade area may be impossible

What you need to know:

Uncertainties and lengthy processes of negotiations may make the envisaged African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) unimplementable. Only the East African Community (EAC) and the South African Customs Union (Sacu) will be able to negotiate collectively as a bloc unlike other economic blocs in the continent. This, The Citizen has learnt, may open up to the big number of individual countries in the negotiating table, making it difficult to conclude negotiations on critical issues.

Arusha. Uncertainty and lengthy processes of negotiations may render the envisaged African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) impossible to implement, The Citizen has learnt.

Only the East African Community (EAC) and the South African Customs Union (Sacu) will be able to negotiate collectively as a bloc unlike other economic blocs in the continent.

“The big number of negotiating parties will make it difficult to conclude negotiations on Protocol of Goods,” said a report presented during talks in Arusha last week.

So far 22 African Union member states – the required number needed for the agreement to come into force – have ratified AfCFTA.

Two of them – Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone – have yet to deposit instruments of ratification at the AU Commission’s secretariat in Addis Ababa.

However, there are fears implementation of the agreement will be hampered by a lengthy negotiation process on finer details in the absence of blocs spearheading the process.

The report hints the Economic Community of the West African States (Ecowas) may not be able to negotiate as a bloc since Nigeria, the region’s economic power house, has not even signed the pact.

Key among the post-ratification processes are conclusion of negotiations on Protocol on Goods, which has nine annexes.

These are Schedule of Tariff Concessions, Rules of Origin, Customs Cooperation, Trade Facilitation and Non-Tariff Barriers (NTBs)

Others are Technical Barriers to Trade, Sanitary and Phytosanitary Standards, Transit and Transport Facilitation and Trade Remedies.

“Though there is a fast pace of ratification, much of the uncertainties and lengthy processes of negotiating instruments to make AfCFTA implementable lie ahead,” the report said.

Tanzania, alongside Burundi and South Sudan, are the remaining EAC member countries which have yet to ratify the pact although they were among the 52 AU states which signed last year. AfCFTA is a planned free trade area, outlined in the African Continental Free Trade Agreement among 49 of the 55 African Union nations. If the agreement is ratified, the free-trade area will be the largest in the world in terms of participating countries since the formation of the World Trade Organization.