JOHANNESBURG: A $1.2 trillion free-trade area stretching across 26 African countries from Cape Town to Cairo is a stepping stone to uniting the poorest continent as one commercial bloc within the next two years, Africa’s top trade official said on Thursday.
The Tripartite Free Trade Agreement (TFTA) was signed into effect in Cairo this week, amalgamating three of Africa’s main trading blocs: the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the East African Community (EAC) and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA).
As well as simplifying Africa’s alphabet soup of overlapping trade zones, the TFTA should boost woefully low levels of intra-regional trade, key to the continent’s economic well-being, African Union (AU) Trade Commissioner Fatima Haram Acyl said. At the moment, trade between African nations accounts for around 10 per cent of the 54-nation continent’s total commerce, a ratio that has been in gradual decline over the past decade and which compares unfavourably to 25 per cent in southeast Asia.
