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Tripartite Free Trade Area plods along slowly in Africa

Trade between African nations has long been outstripped by intra-regional trade in other parts of the world – for Africa as a whole, intra-regional trade is between 10% and 13% of total trade. This is far lower than in regions such as the EU, where about 60% of trade is between member states, and the Association of South-east Asian Nations, which has a rate of about 25%. Intra-regional trade in North America is put at about 40%.

However, the ratification of the Tripartite Free Trade Sector(TFTA) – potentially later in 2017 – could help change that and push the development of additional intra-regional trade increase. A pan-regional free-trade zone, the TFTA stretches from Cairo to Cape Town and encompasses 26 African nations.

Africa’s Tripartite Free Trade Area would reduce regional tariffs and create a pan-African single market, to aid development and cash in on a growing middle class in the continent. But with member countries often belonging to multiple economic areas, progress is both complex and slow, as Kit Gillet reports.
 

Global economic gravity rapidly pulling towards Africa

The second International Conference on the Emergence of Africa (ICEA) was held in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, in March 2017.

Since the initial conference in 2015 — at a time of robust economic increase on the continent — hopes for economic evolution have dimmed because of a crash in the price of commodities, volatile world financial markets and a slowdown in world increase. Before departing New York to attend the second ICEA conference, jointly organised by the World Bank, the African Development Bank and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Assistant Secretary-General of the UN and chief of UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Africa Abdoulaye Mar Dieye sat down for an interview with Africa Renewal’s Kingsley Ighobor to talk about Africa’s economic development opportunities and challenges.