The African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) is Long Overdue
There
are certain traits that are unique to countries in the global South. One of
them is that they are split into tiny meaningless polities that confine and
condemn their people to economic suffocation. The global north has shown that
meaningful economic progress is attainable through expansive markets forged
either through uniting e.g. USA or by forming strong economic communities like
the EU. This allows for a wider scope of free movements of services, goods and
people and tremendously opens up opportunities for a better short at life for the billions of people
living within those territories. Indeed, it is a historical fact that, in
places like the US, millions of people make several moves around the country
searching for better opportunities before they can finally settle. The same
happens in Europe.
This is not possible in
the South; Latin America, parts of Asia and Africa where majority of the people
are confined and condemned into tiny spaces and their movements are heavily
restricted. In Kenya, for instance, there are many people to whom the world
means that local town and its biggest expansion is a move to Nairobi. And, if
and when they cannot 'hack life' in Nairobi they hit the road of desperation
and depression and that marks their path to a meaningless end. It is not
necessarily that such a people do not work hard enough. The fact is that their
political realities have denied them opportunities.
China is emerging
because it is in itself a market of over a billion humans. Africa's population
which is almost same as China's is divided into 1,2,3 ....54 nations. These
entities called African nations are useless and unsustainable yet they even
dare stick to colonial boundaries that continue to inhibit and limit the
movements of their people. I do not know how and why anybody in their right
mind should be opposed to the African Continental Free Trade Agreement
(AfCFTA). It can only be as a result of mediocrity and/or manipulation by those
who do not want to see the emancipation of Africa. Methinks, this is something
that needed to have happened immediately after independence. African nations
must run away from stupid colonial entities like the Commonwealth and the
International Organization of La Francophonie (OIF) and focus in opening up the
continent and boosting intra-Africa trade to spur really development on the
continent.
The African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) is Long Overdue
Reviewed by Ibrahim Magara
on
November 25, 2018
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