AfCFTA: centripetal or centrifugal force?

Bilaterals has published on its website the findings of a recent webinar organized on 12 September by several organizations from the civil society and the agriculture sectors in Africa to collectively reflect on what the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) means for ordinary Africans in a time of deep climate, economic and food crises. The webinar examines the AfCFTA from a perspective that is different from the one we are used to, drawing a rather apocalyptic scenario.

After a brief description of the general architecture of the agreement, the process for the elaboration of the AfCFTA is accused to have been designed by African policymakers by using a top-down approach, in a non-democratic process where its rules have been crafted by mimicking existing WTO regulations under the push of world powers that have funded the entire project. The agreement is accused of not taking into consideration the African reality and to overlook the African economic context, where trade is predominantly conducted informally by small scale traders, the majority of whom are women. The AfCFTA, according to the speakers, would be an attempt to open the African market to African large corporations that will benefit from foreign capital to introduce a deep capitalist transformation in the continent which risks to completely destroy endogenous infant industries. In addition, the AfCFTA is accused to threaten the food security and the biodiversity in Africa, and of causing a degradation of work conditions in the continent.

It looks like an over pessimistic scenario, and as a matter of fact, most of these conclusions seem inspired to conspiracy theories and based on deep cynicism. However, it is also important to keep into consideration these sentiments, because they show that resistances to the implementation of the agreement are still strong. And this can be an obstacle to its concrete operalization. This is probably a sign that these sectors have been limitedly involved during the negotiations of the agreement, at the point that they now feel the AfCFTA as a set of rules imposed from the top, totally disconnected from reality.

According to some of the speakers to the webinar, the AfCFTA is an agreement designed in the shadows, within closed government rooms where only public officials and a few privileged persons from the rest of the society had access. They argue that few people still today can obtain clear and transparent information on this agreement. Pure ramblings? Maybe. But the fact that most of Protocols of the AfCFTA still remain unpublished, despite their official approval by the AU authorities, does not help to reject all these accusations. Also the African Union website hosts versions of the Annexes to the Protocol on Trade in Goods that are not updated, still showing as "outstanding" some of the provisions that have instead been definitively agreed. An example? Annex 2 on Origin, at art. 5, indicates two alternative proposals for the determination of the origin of fish and fishery products. The AfCFTA Manual on Rules of Origin indicates (page 13), that the proposal 2 is the one that has been finally accepted, adding other temporary exceptions to the rule for island States. This obviously creates disorientation in those that are willing to try to understand the AfCFTA rules, especially those referred to sensitive sectors, as the fishing industry. Same for the AfCFTA implementation strategies, because to date only a bunch of African States have made them public.

Frankly speaking, the issues raised during the webinar seem science fiction. Yet, some of these worries could be addressed through a greater transparency in the publication of AfCFTA texts, and through targeted awareness-raising actions. The importance and opportunities offered by the Agreement are still little known, this is the reality. And the communication actions implemented so far should aim a little lower, targeting not only apex associations, but also categories representing the most vulnerable sectors of society, so far mostly neglegted.