ETHIOPIA

African Union leaders to press forward on continental free trade deal

January 30, 2020

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa chairs the 33rd Ordinary Session of the African Union Assembly in Addis Ababa. He is expected to urge more investment in the bloc’s new free trade area and call for investors to choose infrastructure over arms. The bloc’s failure to Silence the Guns in Africa by 2020, a commitment made in 2013, overshadows the proceedings.

The African Continental Free Trade Area, launched in Jul 2019, aims to develop a single market of 54 nations, with 1.2 billion people and a combined GDP of US $3 trillion. In the opening address to the Financial Times Africa Summit in Oct 2019, Ramaphosa described the agreement as the realization of the dreams of the founders of the African Union 56 years ago, and compared it to the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 that began an era of integration in Europe. It is expected to boost intra-African trade from 15 per cent to 25 per cent by 2040. Intra-African trade is low compared to 47 per cent reported in the Americas, 61 per cent in Asia and 67 per cent in Europe, according to News24, which reported Ramaphosa’s speech.

The African Union’s Master Roadmap of Practical Steps to Silence the Guns in Africa by the Year 2020 offers steps for realizing the bloc’s plan to end conflict on the continent. It was presented as a flagship project of the bloc’s wider developmental blueprint for the continent, Agenda 2063. Its Master Roadmap identifies just about all of Africa’s familiar ills as causes of the endemic violence.

December is on target to end without the guns of Africa being silenced. In his address in London, Ramaphosa asserted that the development of Africa is being threatened through interference by external powers. "Foreign money that buys the weapons used in theatres of war on the African continent should instead be building bridges, ports and rail lines, schools, hospitals and clinics," he said.

#23311 Published: November 5, 2019