Restless Africa Seeks Its Space in Post-Globalization

The African Continental Free Trade Area (ACFTA) has emerged as a response to Africa’s need to increase the levels in the exchange of goods and services among countries and also to promote regional integration. Intra-continental trade accounts for only 16-17% of all of Africa’s exports and imports compared to 68% in Europe, 59% in Asia, and 55% in the Americas. The African Union (AU) established the free trade area to increase trade among the fifty-five member states with no restrictions on tariffs, which makes it one of the largest trading blocks in the world. The ACFTA, which was formally launched during the 12^th Extraordinary Summit of the African Union Heads of State and Government, held in Niamey, Niger, in June 2019, has been signed by 44 countries and ratified by 43 countries, which has now created a market of more than 1.3 billion people with a combined GDP of $3.5 trillion. The AU’s intention is for the establishment of the ACFTA to enable the continent to improve and strengthen its trade and investment position vis-à-vis the rest of the world.

Those who are critical of the ACFTA argue that it remains a mirage because the continent is not sufficiently integrated to speak with one voice on international trade issues, due to the levels of fragmentation due to the legacy of its colonial past. For example, the Francafrique region of 14 countries, whose economies were manipulated by France, continues to persist, but is now being challenged by the formation of new groupings, such as the Alliance of Sahelian States (AES). In spite of these criticisms, the ACFTA presents an ambitious Pan-African project to encourage internal trade and the collaborative pooling of African resources to enhance structural transformation and the development of regional value chains. Trading under the provisions of the ACFTA begun in January 2021, and the intention is to eliminate the tariffs on good progressively over the next five to ten years. The countries that are currently most active in trade within the ACFTA are Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Morocco, and Tanzania. The main goods that are being traded within the ACFTA are manufactured goods, raw materials, and energy commodities. In particular, significant trading relates to textiles, clothing, machinery, electronics, coffee, tea, cocoa, fruits, vegetables, oil, gas, minerals, and pharmaceuticals. In this regard, the ACFTA will be a game changer in the sense that it can contribute towards creating more value addition, employment opportunities, income generation, and knowledge transfer on the African continent.

To complement the efforts to operationalize ACFTA, the AU is also developing a framework for a Single Air Transport Market, as well as an AU Protocol on the Free Movement of People. The continent’s regional blocks including the 16-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the 8-member East African Community (EAC) have already formally issued their regional passports, which enable citizens from the individual countries to travel and trade in the different member states. The African Union has also issued its African Union passport but this has only been granted to heads of state, ministers, and ambassadors, and there have been delays to extend this to all citizens across the continent. The intention is that the establishment of ACFTA will also increase the trend towards political regional and continental integration, and may have an effect on stabilizing the war-affected regions of Africa, due to increased opportunities for young entrepreneurs to trade across borders. Trade is premised on relationships and cooperation, and insecurity is a function of the breakdown of relationships and the fragmentation of cooperation. Therefore, if initiatives can be taken to increase cross-border trade in a cooperative manner, this will contribute towards establishing and strengthening relationships, as well as improving the security situation across the continent.

The predominant fear is that the ACFTA – and its effects of increasing cross-border trade – will paradoxically increase the opportunities for nefarious actors to exploit the regionalism to fuel their trade in illicit weapons, narcotics, illegal immigration, natural resource extraction, and human trafficking. However, this is an erroneous assumption, because these illicit trade processes are already taking place even prior to the establishment of ACFTA. The alternative outcome is more likely, in the sense that the implementation of the ACFTA will contribute towards the establishment and strengthening of relationships between people, who remain caged, confined, and restricted from the freedom of movement, in the artificially constructed nation-states. The increased interaction and exchange through trade will contribute towards improving the well-being of communities. More specifically, the ACFTA will enable the multitude of ethnic communities that cut across state boundaries, pastoralist populations whose mode of existence necessitates crossing international boundaries, large migrant and refugee populations to utilize the opportunities provided by the Continental Free Trade Area to ensure their socio-economic livelihood.

An Afrobarometer research study suggests “it is possible in the coming decade that the African Continental Free Trade Agreement may facilitate enhanced intra-continental mobility.” People-to- people regionalism already exists beyond the borders of states, and it is driven by the grassroots interactions of citizens between countries. Consequently, the full operationalization of ACFTA will enable African citizens to leverage it to also increase social interaction and job creation amongst cross-border traders in the region, which could contribute towards improving the livelihood of people across the continent. A key challenge is to ensure that citizens across the region engage with the establishment of ACFTA. In this regard, African governments, private sector, and civic actors engaging in transnational trade can contribute towards fostering a sense of belonging, shared values, peace, and security through cross-border interaction, in collaboration with governments and inter-governmental organizations.

The ACFTA is not a panacea or magic bullet, but it can serve as a game changer for the African continent through increasing trade, which will also complement the strengthening trend towards regional and continental political and socio-economic integration.