Secretary-General of the AfCFTA Secretariat, Wamkele Mene, says he is impressed with the stakeholder support that has pushed his outfit to implement a trade agreement in the middle of a global pandemic with dire disruptions to global supply chains.
“The AfCFTA Secretariat has received a lot of support from heads of states, ministers of trade, from the private sector in Africa who want to see this free market implemented to drive Africa’s economic empowerment,” he says in a discussion with Single
About 39 countries have so far ratified the agreement, which the AfCFTA boss says makes it the fastest instrument in the African Union to be ratified.“We have hosted here in Accra, four meetings of ministers of trade, we have succeeded to establish Accra as Africa’s trade and commercial diplomacy capital,” he adds.
According to Mr. Mene, the launching of the Pan African Payments and Settlement System (PASS) in January next year, will give added impetus to the implementation of the continent’s biggest economic project.“We have had tremendous success, having negotiated Rules of Origin and we now have a very strong basis for starting the next year,” he adds.
Despite some key challenges, with some states yet to fully ratify their protocols and ongoing discussions on rules of origin, the AfCFTA boss said there is strong interest in the AfCFTA from all party states.“I have visited many countries during the course of this year. What is interesting about all of these visits to all the countries that I go to is the desire. Africans want to establish a new trade pattern. They want to trade more with other African countries and less with the old trade patterns,” Wamkele Mene indicates.
According to him, Africans want to see a spirit of entrepreneurship being developed by the free trade agreement with even higher interest from women in trade and young entrepreneurs.“What encourages me is that we have the support of small-medium enterprises, large African multinational corporations and the civil society in Africa.
So, we have very strong momentum as we enter 2022 to make sure that this does indeed become a reality for all of us,” the AfCFTA boss says.
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