Pan-African and nonpartisan survey research network, Afrobarometer, has said Africans are almost evenly divided on the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement.
Per the survey conducted by Afrobarometer on the AfCFTA, 47 percent of Africans support policies that protect domestic industries, while 49 percent prefer open borders for trade and influx of other African businesses.
Resistance to open borders for trade, the survey notes, is particularly strong in Tunisia (70%), Lesotho (63%), Botswana (62%) and Gabon (60%). West and East Africans on the other hand favour cross-border trade openness.
Mounting reistance to open borders for cross border trading among African countries, majority of Africans (58%) surprisingly want their governments to allow foreign-owned retail shops in their respective countries in order to ensure a wide selection of low-cost consumer goods.
A slim majority of Africans (55%) per the survey conducted however, supported the free movement of people and goods across international borders.
According to Afrobarometer, levels of support for free cross-border movement have changed considerably over time, including a 27-percentage-point increase in Lesotho and a 25-point drop in Sierra Leone since 2014/2015.
The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) which kicked-off on January 1, 2021, is the world’s largest free-trade zone. With a combined gross domestic product of about $2.2 trillion, the AfCFTA is projected to generate increased cross-border trade and investment volumes, technology transfers, and income levels, lifting 30 million Africans out of extreme poverty by 2035.
Despite the enormous benefits to be derived from the trade agreement,, the AfCFTA, Afrobarometer asserts faces a multitude of hurdles to effective implementation, from weaknesses in trade infrastructure, human capital, and information and communications technology to unresolved strategic and regulatory considerations, including the absence of a shared trading currency.
According to Afrobarometer, successfully implementing the AfCFTA in the face of these pressures will require political will as well as the buy-in of ordinary Africans whose labor, capital, and knowledge will form the lifeblood of a single market.
