Regional Integration
The 6th Joint United Nations Economic Commission for Africa-African Union Commission meeting of Finance, Planning and Development Ministers met in Abidjan on the 25th and 26th of March. Intensive discussions emphasised the imperative to reverse the economic quagmire of the past decades by focusing on industrialisation as a necessary path towards sustained wealth creation for an emerging Africa. This is a not an option, it is a must if the continent wants to pass the litmus test of successful, sustainable and inclusive structural transformation and drive its population, once and for all, out of the economic ...
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This article was co-authored by Jeske van Seters. [updated 27 March 10.00 CET] This blog will be updated with the latest developments during 25-26 March 2013 from the African Union Conference Centre, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Second day and post-PP thoughts: Looking back at the PP after its closing, you could question the added-value of this annual event for the implementation of CAADP and the achievement of results and impact. Does it serve the CAADP purpose or is it a waste of time and money? Seemingly supporting the latter point of view, critical remarks by participants on ...
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Barriers to trade in agricultural goods: let’s focus on solutions, not on problems
Account of the “Food Across Borders” conference in West Africa West Africa has far-reaching commitments to promote intra-regional trade. The Economic Community of West African States’ trade liberalization scheme, launched back in 1990, provides for the elimination of tariff and non-tariff barriers between the region’s 15 member states. Also the regional agricultural policy, adopted in 2005, reflects this ambition, the regionalization of agricultural and food products is at its core. Both frameworks should contribute to food sovereignty and food security in West Africa, particularly through enhanced cross-border trade between food abundant and food deficit areas. ...
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Trade ministers and officials from South and North, academics, and donors will gather at the OECD in Paris next week for a policy dialogue to discuss the future of the Aid for Trade initiative. Conceived in 2005 in the context of the WTO Doha Round, Aid for Trade aims to improve the trading prospects of developing countries through targeting aid to this sector. In the seven years since its launch, there has already been a fair amount of navel-gazing amongst policymakers on questions of how to ‘operationalise’ such a broad and ambitious agenda. In the ...
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Dan Lui co-authored this article. For the first time, African Union ministers of trade and agriculture gathered last week at a joint conference in Addis Ababa. Originally scheduled for late October, the conference had been postponed since not enough ministers from AU member states had confirmed their attendance. Also this time the conference did not manage to attract a full turnout of high-level representatives from all African states and Regional Economic Communities – yet it still represented a significant moment with officials and experts from the two traditionally separate sectors and from both regional and ...
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With burgeoning regional integration and free-trade arrangements around the world, a key question is whether or not agreed treaties are being implemented and if so, with what impact. This is all the more relevant since a significant number of South-South Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) suffer from a well known lack of implementation, monitoring, and general follow up. A good starting point is to ask what to monitor, why do it, how to do it and who should do it – we may even find that the exercise of monitoring itself helps improve implementation! Sharing monitoring ...
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Lost opportunity to build bridges: African Ministers of Agriculture and Trade meeting postponed
By postponing next week’s meeting of African trade and agriculture ministers in Addis Ababa, the African Union risks losing a real opportunity to promote the opening up of intra-African trade to boost economic growth and develop greater food security on the continent. It’s vital that new dates are set soon to allow high-level discussion of these crucial issues to move forward. The African Union unexpectedly postponed the Joint Conference of Ministers of Agriculture and Ministers of Trade scheduled to take place on 1st and 2nd November in Addis Ababa just four days before it was ...
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Each year ECDPM publishes a Policy Brief, on Challenges for EU-Africa Relations, outlining key events and expected trends for the year to come. This year’s ‘Challenges Paper’ will aim in particular to cover the preparatory work for the EU-Africa Summit in 2014, and the major issues that will influence it or be addressed there, as well as the impact these issues might have on future EU-Africa relations. This article provides an initial indication of our plans for the paper that will be published at the end of year. If you have a different take on ...
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Many trade corridors in Africa were designed in colonial times, primarily to serve extractive industries and ease the transport of goods from the interior of the country to the ports, and back. Even those corridors, which have been developed more recently – such as the Maputo corridor (connecting South African provinces, including the economically developed areas around Jo’burg and Pretoria, with Mozambique’s capital), which is said to be the most efficient in terms of facilitating the transport of goods – tend to target large enterprises, while seemingly failing to benefit smallholders. If designed well, trade ...
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At the opening ceremony of the negotiations of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the European Union (EU) and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) States the chairperson of the ACP Group arrived late, keeping hundreds of officials and diplomats, not least then EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy, waiting. This was on 27 September 2002.Ten years and four EU Trade Commissioners later, the EU still seems to be waiting for many ACP countries to come along. Perhaps with few exceptions, the EPA agenda has not generated the enthusiasm for effective development partnership it was meant to ...
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