Beatrice Chaytor shares her top recommendations on the AfCFTA
We caught up with international trade lawyer Beatrice Chaytor to pick her brain on some of the best publications on the AfCFTA and she happily obliged!
Beatrice specializes in providing advice and support to African governments in their engagement with regional and international trade policy processes. She is currently Head of Trade in Services in the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat, and works on the negotiations and implementation of the Agreement on establishing the AfCFTA. Ms Chaytor has previously run her own law firm, Chariot Eight in Freetown, Sierra Leone, providing legal services to local, regional and international clients on a range of corporate law matters including trade, investment, natural resources and environment. She is interested in research and analysis on a range of legal and economic policy issues affecting Africa. She has undertaken assignments for DFID, the European Union Commission, the UN FAO, and also has private sector interests in horticulture, packaging, design and well-being.
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Happy reading!
The AfCFTA and African Trade: An Introduction to the Special Issue
By Hippolyte Fofack and Andrew Mold, Journal of African Trade, Volume 8, Issue 2 (Special Issue), (2021)
The article lays out the case for the game changing nature of the AfCFTA which it argues offers the opportunity to accelerate the transformation of African economies to boost intra-African trade and enhance integration of the region into the global economy. It is the introductory article to the Special Issue on ‘The AfCFTA and African Trade’. the first ever devoted to the AfCFTA and African trade by an academic journal. It provides an overview of the existing literature, touching on the history of regional integration in Africa. Fofack and Mold explore the policy implications of the landmark agreement for African trade and economic development, reviewing its political aspects along the way, and highlighting some of the potential challenges associated with its implementation.
The African Continental Free Trade Area: Economic and Distributional Effects
By The World Bank, 2020
In this detailed report, World Bank authors acknowledge the scope of AfCFTA is so large, covering reduction of tariffs and policy areas such as trade facilitation and services, as well as regulatory measures such as sanitary standards and technical barriers to trade, that full implementation of AfCFTA would reshape markets and economies across the region and boost output in the services, manufacturing and natural resources sectors. The report places the creation of the vast AfCFTA regional market in the context of the turmoil facing the global economy due to the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that the AfCFTA is a major opportunity to help African countries diversify their exports, accelerate growth, and attract foreign direct investment.
The report is designed to guide policymakers in implementing policies that can maximize the agreement’s potential gains while minimizing risks. It notes that creating a continent-wide market will require a determined effort to reduce all trade costs. Governments will also need to design policies to increase the readiness of their workforces to take advantage of new opportunities. That said, the central message from this report is that implementation of the AfCFTA Agreement will lead to lifting millions of Africans out of extreme poverty.
The Promise of the AfCFTA
By ECDPM, Philomena Apiko, Sean Woolfrey and Bruce Byers, ECDPM Paper, December (2020)
In this discussion paper, the authors highlight the significance of the AfCFTA stating that it promises a virtuous circle of greater market opportunities (particularly in relation to manufacturing, agriculture, services, and e-commerce), triggering more trade and investment, and allowing greater value addition and productivity growth – leading to more and better jobs with social inclusion, and thus further enlarged markets. But they argue that for the full benefits of the AfCFTA to accrue to African countries and citizens, numerous additional policy enablers – measures, reforms and investment – are also key, not least in infrastructure, transport corridors and logistics, as well as to improve the business climate in African countries.
The authors note the high-level political momentum around the AfCFTA, but they caution that its ultimate success depends on African states not only ratifying, but fully implementing and complying with the AfCFTA, while also investing in the necessary enablers. The discussion paper explores how the political economy dynamics around the AfCFTA between and within countries and sectors will be key to understanding how and where most impact will be felt, and therefore where and what kind of external support is necessary and useful to ensure the successful implementation of the AfCFTA and moving from agreement to impact.
The AfCFTA: Towards a New Legal Model for Trade and Development
By Katrin Kuhlmann and Akinyi Lisa Agutu, Georgetown Journal of International Law, (2020)
In their article, Kuhlmann and Agutu boldly declare that the AfCFTA presents a new normative approach to trade and development that is positioned to rewrite the rules in a more inclusive and equitable way and, over time, possibly affect global trade well beyond the African continent. The article contrasts the stifled approaches in the World Trade Organisation with that of the attempts of African countries to reshape the nature and meaning of concepts such as Special and Differential Treatment (S&D). The article argues that although the connection between trade and development is more important than ever before, traditional S&D is not positioned to deliver on broader priorities of social and economic development in the current international climate. It sets out the argument that Africa’s approach under the new AfCFTA sets the stage for a needed refresh of S&D. While the AfCFTA incorporates traditional aspects of S&D, it also includes elements of a forward-looking, rules-based approach to further economic and social development and advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The article concludes that this new dimension of S&D holds great potential for promoting integration through trade, representing the needs of a diverse group of countries in the rulemaking process, and reshaping international economic law more broadly to generate positive development outcomes.
AfCFTA – The Euphoria, Pitfalls and Prospects
By Collins C Ajibo, Journal of World Trade, Volume 53, Issue 5 (2019).
In this article, Ajibo acknowledges the significance of the ratification of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), noting that it climaxes effort by the African Union to foster intra-African trade, socio-economic development, and industrial competitiveness in Africa. AfCFTA will engender massive liberalization of intra-African trade in goods and services, making it easier for business to trade across borders and reduce the costs of trade. But he argues that there are fears that a successful implementation of the agreement in a continent that lacks capacity, industrial competitiveness and infrastructure will be fraught with challenges. The article contends that the success of AfCFTA will be significantly dependent on a number of factors, namely the level of commitment exhibited by the Member States, availability of technical capacity and infrastructure, transparency and accountability of processes, and the manner infractions and complaints are addressed or redressed.
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