Africa FTA in Mid Dec in Cairo Meet

The planned Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) – a zone that would be the largest free trade area in Africa and span across the continent’s three main regional economic communities (RECs)– is now set to launch in mid-December at the Tripartite Summit of Heads of State and Government in Cairo, Egypt.

The TFTA will include Libya, Djibouti, Eritrea, Sudan, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mauritius, Madagascar, Comoros, Seychelles, Mozambique, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, and Swaziland.

This announcement was made at the end of a two-day meeting of the Tripartite Sectoral Committee of Ministers in Bujumbura, Burundi on 25 October.

The TFTA, once enacted, would bring together the East African Community (EAC), the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA).

In other words, it would cover 26 countries ranging from Egypt to South Africa with a combined population of 625 million people and an aggregate GDP of US$1 trillion.

These figures represent half of the African Union’s membership and 58 percent of the continent’s economic activity, according to COMESA.

The TFTA project, also known as the Grand FTA, was originally endorsed at the Tripartite Summit of Heads of State and Government in Johannesburg in June 2011. That endorsement came three years after another tripartite summit in Uganda, where the Heads of State and Government of the respective RECs agreed on a “programme of harmonisation of trading arrangements amongst the three regional economic communities.”

According to COMESA Secretary General Sindiso Ngwenya, who chairs the Tripartite Task Force, the decision to operationalise the free trade area by the end of this year takes “into account the fact that the majority of the Tripartite Member/Partner States have made ambitious tariff offers” in the ongoing negotiations.

Zimbabwean trade official Chiratidzo Iris Mabuwa, who chaired the Burundi ministerial meeting, urged delegations to now engage in “expedite[d] negotiations on trade-related areas, including trade in services, intellectual property, and competition policy” to enable the formal launch in mid-December.

Sources close to the negotiations have indicated that a post-signature implementation plan will be enacted immediately after the launch. This would include, among other elements, the finalisation of negotiations on outstanding areas of the TFTA Agreement - most likely Rules of Origin (RoO), trade remedies, and dispute settlement – along with the ratification of the Agreement by member states and the start of the implementation.

Stepping stone for continental free trade

The proposed 26-country Tripartite FTA, together with other regional FTA processes, is meant to set the stage for a broader Continental FTA, or CFTA.

Upon their expected completion in 2014, these regional processes would be consolidated into the CFTA between 2015 and 2016, with the pan-African pact launching in 2017 and a continental customs union forming by 2019, according to a roadmap released by the African Union in 2011.

The roadmap also encourages the regional blocs of the TFTA “to ensure that the member states currently outside the three RECs FTA join and become part of the Tripartite FTA.”

The proposed CFTA would be a key component of the African Union’s (AU) strategy to boost intra-African trade, which currently stands at 12 percent of total trade, compared to 60 percent for Europe, 40 percent for North America, and 30 percent for ASEAN, according to statistics cited by the WTO.

Remaining challenges

Phase one will be officially concluded in December 2014 after the 3rd Summit of Heads of State and Government, which will see the signing of the Declaration on the Conclusion of Negotiations on Phase One – Trade in Goods. It is envisaged that phase two will begin immediately after phase one, while negotiations on outstanding areas will also work towards conclusion based on an agreed timeframe.

Specifically, in phase one, the COMESA-EAC-SADC troika faces notable challenges in harmonising differential RoO, which have so far impeded inter-regional trade and the creation of regional value chains.

Apart from Rules of Origin, the other difficult negotiating areas involve trade remedies and a dispute settlement mechanism.

Observers familiar with the talks have said that one of the key challenges consists in finding an acceptable framework for RoO, as the EAC and COMESA regimes in this area are significantly different from the one used by SADC.