Browsing: common market

Argentina & Brazil Joint Currency Lessons for Africa

Lessons from Brazil and Argentina’s Joint Currency Experiment for African Nations

Regional Markets

The two south American nations are exploring methods to increase bilateral commerce and wean themselves off the mighty US currency. Its announcement has been widely criticized since they are not a natural fit for a single currency. This is due to one country's relative economic prosperity and the other's economic upheaval. This experience between Brazil and Argentina is instructive and illustrative for African nations with comparable aspirations to develop a single currency.

  • Brazil and Argentina announced early last month that they would create a joint currency to increase trade and political relations.
  • Similarly Africa has expressed the same ambitions at different times. The advent of AfCFTA gives further impetus to the concept that Brazil and Argentina has reignited.
  • Brazil and Argentina first came up with the idea of a joint currency in the 1980s but it never took off because economic fundamentals.
  • The joint currency experiment by Brazil and Argentina
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Federal Republic of East Africa: Could this be the continent’s most powerful country?

Regional Markets

With the recent addition of the DRC to the East African region, landlocked countries have found an alternative port of entry in the Atlantic Ocean. The swiftness of trade with two ports of entry and the region’s strategic location will be incomparable to any other region on the continent.

The East African Federation would be the fourth largest country in both population and landmass, trailing after China, India and the United States. President Uhuru Kenyatta says that the federation would have over 300 million people.

The gross domestic product for the region will sum up to US$250 billion, the fourth-largest in Africa and the 34th biggest globally. Since the beginning of the last decade, East Africa has had the fastest growing economy globally. In 2019, the region’s economy grew by about 5 per cent. If the federation continues with this growth rate, the new country would quickly become the biggest …

Africa’s four MEGA TRENDS that are overcoming the global pandemic

Opinion

Africa appears to have narrowly escaped the level of devastation that COVID19 is wreaking in the global north with China as its entry.[1] As if the virus followed the global supply chain to destroy it.[2] The global supply chain links China to the global north before connecting to Africa[3] so by the time the virus got here African leaders shut the borders – that is the saving grace despite the doom’s day prophecies of Bill Gates.[4] Africa got it right this time around without the help of the western saviors which begs George Ayittey’s famous quote “Africa is poor because she is not free”.[5]

According to the IMF[6] and WorldBank[7], Africa would experience her first recession in 25 years, but it would not be as severe as the global north.[8] Her recovery in my view could be fast-tracked by four mega …