The African Continental Free Trade Area

On July 25th 2022, the AfCFTA Council of Ministers announced the AfCFTA Initiative on Guided Trade, a pilot phase of the AfCFTA that allows 7 countries, Rwanda, Cameroon, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius and Tanzania, to begin trading under the AfCFTA regime demonstrating the functionality of the AfCFTA. It will also identify companies, products, customs procedures and logistics processes required to enable trade under the AfCFTA.

The AfCFTA creates a market of 1.4 billion people and a combined GDP of $3.4 trillion making it the world's second largest free trade area by number of member-states, after the World Trade Organization, and the largest in terms of population and geographic size. The economic significance of an agreement of this magnitude is immense, and if successfully implemented, is likely to have enormous impact on business dynamics within Africa and between Africa and the rest of the world. Therefore, the AfCFTA has created several strategic options that businesses need to assess in order to take advantage of the new opportunities that have been opened and maximize the benefits of this new reality – for themselves and for Africa.

This forum will discuss:

• The implications on global value and supply chains and location of production (local & regional).
• The implications of consolidation of 55 countries (markets) into a gigantic single market of more than 1.4bn people.
• How lower costs of cross-border activities change the trade-off between proximity to markets and the economics of specialization and scale.