The 54 African countries must make the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) work towards the establishment of an enduring economic integration of the continent, the Director General/Chief Executive Officer of the Association of Nigerian Exporters (ANE), Prince Joseph Idiong, has said.
Idiong spoke in Abuja on Wednesday at the dissemination workshop on the impact of AfCFTA on the Nigerian economy hosted by the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDS), the Strategic and Proactive Training and Research Arm of the Nigerian National Assembly.
He said at the inception of the AfCFTA on March 21, 2018, there was a lot of skepticism within and outside Africa that the continent would not be able to unite to establish an enduring economic integration system.
With the successful establishment of the AfCFTA, Idion said the challenge before every African was how can we make the new system work.
He expressed delight that NILDS convened the interactive session to provide stakeholders and other participants to discuss and take ownership of the Scheme, and x-ray its potential and opportunities to develop an All Nigerian National AfCFTA Implementation Agenda.
“We should not fail to look at our past performances under other Regional Trade Agreements. Take, for instance, the African Growth & Opportunities Act (AGOA) established in the year 2000 for African Countries to trade duty-free with the USA. How have we fared in that AGOA Trade Agreement? What can we learn from our experience in AGOA to optimize our benefits in AfCFTA?” Idiong advised.
“We should also look at how we have been taking advantage of Bilateral Trade Agreements signed between Nigeria and other Countries. Take, for instance, the Economic Agreement signed between Nigeria and South Africa, which has given birth to MTN, DSTv, ShopRite, Stanbic IBTC Bank, etc, to the advantage of South Africa,” he added.
Also, the ANE DG urged the Nigerian government to look at the expected role of Nigerian Embassies across Africa in promoting AfCFTA, noting that past experiences revealed Nigerian Embassies could not participate in Trade Promotion events in their Host countries until they received approvals from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Abuja, which often never came till the end of such scheduled events dates.
Besides, he said there was a need for the constitution of the Nigerian National AfCFTA Implementation Hubs at some Regional levels to leverage, to allow Embassies to have Annual AfCFTA Work Plans approved in advance every year by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
He said access to the market is what AfCFTA would provide to the African business communities, adding that even in today’s online market access media environment, Nigerian and African governments still needed to provide African Transnational Highways and Intercontinental Air hubs to ensure that AfCFTA scheme works optimally.
With these Transnational Highways and Intercontinental Air hubs expected to have been established before the advent of AfCFTA on July 20, 2006, the ANE boss said the 1st African Intercontinental Air hub & Transnational Highway Forum in Abuja drew attention to the capital flight from Africa to Europe when in transit through European Airports before visiting fellow African countries.
“If African countries that the Transnational highway passes through take loans from the World Bank, African Development Bank or Chinese and other Leading Economic Nations Export-Import Bank to build their portions of the Transnational highway, our Export products would move easily across the continent,” he proposed.
On the role of the National Assembly in making laws to protect the country’s economy, Idiong said now that the country was in dire need of foreign exchange, the National Assembly would need to revisit laws establishing trade and investment-related agencies and fine-tune them, by putting the right institutional associations in their Governing Boards for honest bits of advice.
He announced the readiness of ANE to work with NILDS, the National Assembly, the European Commission and all genuine AfCFTA stakeholders to facilitate export-oriented laws for the country going forward.
