By Meg Dallett
Earlier this year, I wrote about the lack of African foreign investment in Africa and how crucial intra-Africa FDI is for the continent’s long-term development. With the developing world’s highest rate of return on investment and plenty of room for new projects, Africa should be an obvious choice for African investments. But in 2008 UNCTAD reported that intra-African investment made up only about 13% of all investment in Africa. Continue reading
Last week, Accra hosted the Ghana-Togo-Benin-Nigeria Business Summit to explore ways to boost investment and trade between our four countries. In a speech read on his behalf, President Faure Gnassingbé of Togo expressed my exact sentiments on regional economic integration. He urged businessmen in these countries and other West African states to stop seeing challenges to cross-border business as obstacles, but instead as opportunities. These trials should be an impetus for us to define appropriate measures for facilitating business, investment and trade. Continue reading
Traveling in Southern Africa for the past week has made me increasingly aware of the need for regional integration in Africa. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is one of the most integrated groups of countries on the continent and continues to make strides toward greater regional cooperation, but barriers to trade and investment are still higher than they could be. Continue reading
by Paul Fakes
The World Trade Organization recently released its 2008 International Trade Statistics. At a glance, you can see not only that Africa remains isolated from global trade (Africa represents only 3% of trade worldwide), but that the continent is still making little progress in expanding regional trade. While regional economic communities are implementing substantive measures to reduce barriers to intra-African trade, it will be some time before regional free trade agreements are fully implemented, not to mention the continuing need for substantial infrastructure investment to reduce the costs of regional trade. Continue reading
by Rosa Whitaker
Congressman Jack Kemp will be remembered for many things, but for me, Jack Kemp will always personify a particular vision of an Africa enjoying the prosperity that only integration can deliver, a full and active partner in the global community.
I was privileged to work with Congressman Kemp to make that vision a reality-first in the late 1990s, when he was one of the main advocates working with me in a bipartisan effort to pass the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), and more recently as co-chair with me of the AGOA Action Committee advocating for enhancements to the legislation. Continue reading
by Paul Fakes
After ECOWAS, the EAC, and COMESA got things rolling, Business Daily Africa reports that regional free trade agreements in Africa are expanding to more and more of the continent:
“Twenty six African countries seeking to merge their economies into a single trading bloc that controls a combined wealth of $624m and a market of 527m people moved to a definitive stage after their leaders approved plans to establish a free trade area early this week.” Continue reading
Africa moved one step closer to full economic integration in October when representatives from three regional trade blocs, including six Heads of State, agreed at a summit hosted by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni in Kampala, to form a new cross-regional free trade bloc and customs union. The new bloc, to be comprised of the 26 member nations of the Common Market of Southern and Eastern Africa (COMESA), the East African Community (EAC) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), will create the largest free trade area on the African continent with a market of over 527 million people and a combined GDP of $624 billion.
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