{"id":6754,"date":"2019-11-25T08:08:47","date_gmt":"2019-11-25T05:08:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=6754"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:42","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:42","slug":"africa-should-focus-on-industrialisation-free-trade-will-follow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/11\/25\/africa-should-focus-on-industrialisation-free-trade-will-follow\/","title":{"rendered":"Africa Should Focus On Industrialisation. Free Trade Will Follow"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>By Michael E Odijie<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/au.int\/en\/cfta\">African Continental Free Trade Area<\/a>&nbsp;is a\ncontinental agreement which came into force in May 2019. It covers trade in\ngoods and services, investment, intellectual property rights and competition\npolicy. Of the 55 African Union member states, only Eritrea has yet to sign it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The immediate\nobjective of the free trade area is principally to boost trade within Africa by\neliminating up to 90% of the tariffs on goods and reducing non-tariff barriers\nto trade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/unctad.org\/en\/pages\/PressRelease.aspx?OriginalVersionID=520\">In\n2017<\/a>, the exports and imports between African countries represented only\n16.6% of Africa\u2019s total exports. This figure is low compared with exports\nwithin other regions: 68.1% in Europe, 59.4% in Asia, and 55.0% in America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Proponents of the\nfree trade area say that increasing intra-Africa trade will provide larger\nmarkets for African producers and encourage manufacturing. It will also help\nachieve a better connection between production and consumption. The&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/unctad.org\/en\/PublicationsLibrary\/aldcafrica2019_en.pdf?user=46\">United\nNations Conference on Trade and Development<\/a>&nbsp;argues that the phase of\ntransition to the free trade area alone could boost intra-African trade&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/unctad.org\/en\/pages\/newsdetails.aspx?OriginalVersionID=2128\">by\n33%<\/a>&nbsp;and increase manufacturing in Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This line of\nargument is that free trade leads to industrialization and structural change.\nBut in my view it works the other way round: industrialization leads to free\ntrade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Industrialization should come first<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Low intra-Africa trade is indeed an indication that African countries do not consume what they produce. But this is a problem of production (product focus), not trade. The export products of most African countries, which follow the colonial pattern, influence the trade strategies, trade agreements and trade-related infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/africa-should-focus-on-industrialisation-free-trade-will-follow-127142\">Read\nmore\u2026<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Michael E Odijie The&nbsp;African Continental Free Trade Area&nbsp;is a continental agreement which came into force in May 2019. It covers trade in goods and services, investment, intellectual property rights&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6757,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}