Abdelmonem Fawzi
We may never be able to build a prosperous economy in our continent, simply because we only work to support the economies of outsiders.
The problem is that every value we have on our land is made to be taken away for free.
To address this challenge, delegates from across Africa participated recently in a three-day Expert Group meeting on financing Africa’s recovery, which took place in Dakar, Senegal.
During the meeting, Stephen Karingi, director of the Regional Integration and Trade Division at the UN Economic Commission for Africa, described regional integration as a ‘key’ to transforming Africa’s fragmented economies.
African countries, he added, should therefore harness opportunities embedded in integration initiatives like the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to foster post-Covid-19 economic recovery and transformation.
“Although commendable progress has been made in advancing integration agendas, challenges remained,” Karingi said.
“On trade integration, progress has been made in boosting intra–African trade like the adoption of industrialization policies and strategies,” he added.
However, he noted that Africa continues to trade more with the outside world than with itself.
Karingi said macroeconomic integration and convergence were essential to accelerating intra-regional trade.
Five regional economic communities, Karingi said, namely COMESA, EAC, ECCAS, ECOWAS, and SADC, have primary macroeconomic convergence criteria already.
Africa’s integration and socioeconomic development, he added, is impeded by huge infrastructure gaps.
“Production integration on the continent remains uneven and weak,” Karingi said.
Meanwhile, Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the ECA, Vera Songwe, said Africa had a unique opportunity to do things differently.
She urged the delegates participating in the meeting to share their experiences and ideas to “break the cycle of solely donor contributed aid” in Africa.
Songwe added that Africa’s growth must be ‘great’, ‘sustainable’ and ‘inclusive’, because growth linked intrinsically to commodity prices “cannot be the norm in the future”.
“As we look at the gains we have made in the last decade and the gains that have been taken away by the Ukraine crisis, we can rethink what kind of growth Africa can have,” she said.
“We must do this as a continent, not as individual countries,” she added.
A delegate from Tanzania wanted the final recommendations of the conference to include a call for member states to unpick any issues standing in the way of a fully operational African free trade agreement.
A completed AfCFTA, he said, would boost trade and investments among member states and help member countries to easily recover from the economic contraction caused by Covid-19.
ECA’s Deputy Executive Secretary, Hanan Morsy, presenting stark data on where the twin crises of the pandemic and Ukraine have brought Africa.
She said some people do not know the length or the breadth of the crisis.
Morsy noted that Africa needed things to get better, and make sure that it does not get worse.
The ECA Conference of Ministers (CoM2022) provided an opportunity to thrash out the details on how this could be achieved.
A delegate from Namibia asked questions about why African states are still competing with each other when they are expected to integrate since the launch of AfCFTA.
Karingi said the integration process was being hindered by difficulties in infrastructure, financing and policy issues like the rules of origin that are a challenge for a common open market.
“The solutions Africa comes up with should outlive the current shocks the continent goes through,” Karingi said. “Dialogue within countries should be encouraged.”
He added that concerted efforts were required from all the regional economic communities, key partners and stakeholders to tackle integration challenges.
African countries, Karingi said, should implement the AfCFTA to strengthen the resilience of African countries to withstand future economic shocks and maintain sustainable growth in the post-Covid-19 era.
The good news is that the ECA would continue to support member states.
It will also continue to support the RECs, the AUC and the AfCFTA secretariat in implementing the agreement and and provide technical support to them.
Director of the Sub-Regional Office for East Africa, Mama Keita, presented a report on behalf of the Intergovernmental Committees of Senior Officials and Experts, which govern the work of the five sub-regional offices for southern Africa (SRO-SA).
Keita said the offices were able to offer technical assistance, advisory services, training and analytical tools to governments and RECs on the AfCFTA which is a cross-regional priority.
In a related development, Director of the African Institute for Development and Economic Planning (IDEP), Karima Bounemra Ben Soltane, noted that efforts for implementing priorities, such as the AfFCFTA would need to be sustained with the support of the human and institutional capacities in member states.
She added that to build national capacities, the ECA instituted the Young Economists Network (ECA-YEN) which will provide the necessary capacities to support countries in macroeconomic modeling and the launch of research programmes in them.
Currently, ECA-YEN brings together nearly 1,000 young economists and 88 universities in 21 countries, who are all working to bridge the gap between academia and decision-making in member states.
Representatives of member states acknowledged and commended the support of the SROs and IDEP.
They reiterated their commitment to working with ECA on regional and national priorities.
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