Secretary-General of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), Wamkele Mene, has said the implementation of AfCFTA, aimed at reducing trade barriers and increasing intra-African trade among others, also seeks to address the continent’s over-reliance on major global supply chains.
Delivering the keynote address during the virtual edition of the 2021 Ghana International Petroleum Conference (Ghipcon) on Wednesday, March 12, Secretary-General Mene, noted it is about time the continent significantly reduced its reliance on global supply chains by establishing value chains on the continent and reconfiguring its supply chains to Africa instead of the western world.
His assertion follows the observed disruptions in global supply chains with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic which hugely affected countries reliant on exports of commodities.
“With the onset of Covid-19, we observed that countries over-reliant on exports of commodities suffered significantly due to the disruption in global supply chains. We as Africa should not be over-reliant on global supply chains, we have the obligation to establish value chains on the continent and reconfigure the supply chains that we rely on so we are less reliant on supply chains that take us elsewhere and more reliant on Africa from the manufacturing, production and industrial development point of view,” he stated.
According to Secretary-General Wamkele Mene, AfCFTA is the first step to establishing regional value chains that are truly integrated and aimed at developing Africa’s industrial capacity and putting the continent on the trajectory of value-addition.
He therefore urged players in the continent’s petroleum downstream industry to process and add value to petroleum products for exports under the AfCFTA.
“Without value-addition in the petroleum industry, the development of a beneficiation capacity in Africa and the trade we seek to boost will not be achieved. The petroleum downstream industry is an integral part of Africa’s industrialization and as we seek to develop refinery capacity and minerals beneficiation capacity on the continent, it is critical that we do so leveraging on the AfCFTA and on the market that it opens,” he stated.
“We should strive to be more of a net exporter and not importer of refined products to make sure that we rely less on exports of crude oil to other countries for them to refine our products and sell them back to us, this is some of the things the AfCFTA seeks to address,” he added.
Giving an update on the implementation of the AfCFTA since its commencement on January 1 2021, Secretary-General Wamkele Mene remarked that all 55 African countries have now signed onto the trade pact with 36 African countries submitting their instruments of ratification to the Secretariat to open up their markets and trade under the AfCFTA.
The 2021 virtual edition of the Ghana International Petroleum Conference (Ghipcon) is on the theme; Positioning Africa’s Petroleum Downstream for AfCFTA.
This year’s edition has the overall objective of focusing on the readiness of the African petroleum downstream industry to take advantage of opportunities offered by the AfCFTA.
