Third World Network Africa, a research and advocacy organization is urging African leaders to develop strategies that will move the continent away from the challenges that confront it by leveraging on the African Continental Free Trade Area.
The advocacy group explains that the lack of political will to execute the already discussed policies has delayed the continent from maximizing its full potentials.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Africa-Wide Consultative Seminar on the AfCFTA in Accra, the Programmes Manager of Third World Network Africa, Tetteh Hormeku Ajei urged policy makers to move away from the rhetoric and commit to implementation feasible strategies.
“For individuals countries to benefit from the AfCFTA, they must have polices in their countries which facilitate production and exports. You can’t actually advance without those policies and what is likely to happen is that we are going to create a very big market and unfortunately the external force that we are trying to run from will rather dominate the market, “he said .
He further added that the siting of the AfCFTA Secretariat in Ghana does not guarantee trade opportunities if government fails to be innovative.
“When it comes to Ghana and the Secretariat, I think Ghanaians we like to over hype ourselves. I think Ghana rushed to host the Secretariat. Now, hosting it does not necessarily bring anything although it can create a few jobs in the interim. If you really want to benefit from the Secretariat, you would have to look at your policies that promote domestic industries and services so that you can export to other African countries.”
He also noted that Africa was not fully ready for the AfCTA Agenda since its conception.
“The fact that in the middle of August 2022 only eight countries has started piloting the trade shows that Africa was not ready to trade .Key agreement that ought to be in place for all the countries to trade are still not ready.”
