IATF drives intra-African trade—Oramah
NDAMU SANDU
The Intra African Trade Fair (IATF) has become a platform for actualising the vision of the African Continental Free Trade agreement (AfCFTA), Afreximbank president Benedict Oramah has said.
AfCFTA, which began trading in January last year, is touted as Africa’s Marshall plan and will drive intra-African trade and is the largest trading bloc in the world after the World Trade Organisation.
Speaking at the host signing agreement for IATF 2023 last week, Oramah said the trade fair was opening up new trade routes, rapidly expanding knowledge of the continent’s trading environment and exposing “our cultural heritage to our markets and access to new markets”.
“The US$75bn of deals sealed during the two IATFs, are reminders of the abundant intra-African trade and investment potentials. They represent the remarkable trade and investment arrangements that wouldn’t have seen the light of day if not for the Trade Fair,” he said, adding there was a committee that tracks implementation of agreements signed at IATF.
He said of the US$32bn deals that were signed at IATF2018, about US$27bn have been implemented, US$1.5bn to US$2bn are under implementation.
“That’s a high success rate. This shows that the agreements were not done frivolously. They were deals that were concrete and bring benefits to Africa,” Oramah said.
IATF2021 generated US$42.1bn in trade and trade-related investment deals. At the fair, Afreximbank signed financing agreements worth US$188m with four local entities to boost power supplies and finance imports of raw materials.
Prudence Sebahizi, AfCFTA Secretariat chief technical advisor, said the AfCFTA must succeed in extricating out of the current colonialist economic model, particularly in respect of trade.
This means that the AfCFTA must place Africa on a heightened industrial development trajectory thereby contributing to Africa’s structural economic transformation, he said.
“Africa must in the long term being less reliant on the export of primary commodities to traditional markets and must devise strategies to accelerate Africa’s industrialisation on a massive scale in order to advance regional and global value chains thereby creating jobs in the export industry,” Sebahizi said.
Albert Muchanga, African Union Commissioner for Economic Development, Trade, Industry and Mining said AfCFTA is the new domestic market for Africa; the national market is giving place to the AfCFTA.
Abidjan will host the third edition of IATF next year. Muchanga said the 3rd edition which comes against a background where there has been disruptions of global supply chains as result of the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine means that Africa has to develop regional and continental value chains and “IATF plays a role in the strategic positioning”.
