Browsing: Agriculture exports

June Njoroge.West African Economic Sectors Article.Caption Apparel Manufacturing in Ghana.Image Source Just Style

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) has been hailed as a catalyst to immense economic development in Africa; a flagship project of the AU’s Agenda 2063, projected to boost intra-African trade, connect over 1.3B people across 55 countries with a combined GDP of about US$3.4 trillion.West Africa is one of the fastest growing regions in Africa and is the official headquarters of the AfCFTA, located in Accra, Ghana; which is among the countries that will commence trading soon.

The region is comprised of sixteen countries which include: Burkina Faso, Benin, Togo, Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Cape Verde, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, Ivory Coast and Liberia. According to the 2020 World Bank Report, ’The African Continental Free Trade Area: Economic and Distributional Effects’; West Africa would see the biggest decline of an estimated 12 million people living in extreme poverty, which is a third of the total…

Africa is great and has the potential to be greater—economically. The youngest continent in the world stands to garner billions in the trade as its youngest generation present a potential to transform, the continent’s economic pillars, from agriculture to investment.

The region has more than 1.3 people and nearly 60 per cent of its population is under 25 years, according to United Nations Data for World Population Prospects 2017. This means that Africa can fetch healthy intra-regional and international trade growth if it utilizes its existing potentials.

As the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is around the corner to be domesticated (postponed due to virus outbreak), the trade pact could ignite Africa’s industrialization and boost income generation.

The trade pact connects more than 1.3 billion Africans in 55 countries with a combined gross domestic product of nearly $ 3.4 trillion while lifting more than 30 million people from extreme …