Kenya launches National AfCFTA Implementation Strategy

In a ceremony held this morning at the Movenpick hotel, in Nairobi, the State Department for Trade & Enterprise Development, Ministry of Industrialization, Trade & Enterprise Development launched the AfCFTA Implementation Strategy, covering the period 2022-2027, formally announcing the composition of the AfCFTA National Implementation Committee, who will be responsible for monitoring and evaluating the strategy during the period of its implementation. AfCFTA National Implementation Committees are bodies whose establishment was decided by the Assembly of Heads of States and Government of the African Union with the AU/Dec. 692/(XXXI), adopted at its thirty-first ordinary session, held in July 2018 in Nouakchott.

The Kenya National AfCFTA Implementation Strategy has been developed with the assistance of The United Nation Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), which has supported and is currently supporting more than 40 African countries in developing such strategies within an EU-funded program of 8 million euro.

The Kenyan document identifies the key manufacturing sectors and services where Kenya has a competitive edge and which are prioritized for unlocking trade opportunities with other African countries. Among them, agriculture, handcraft, oil & gas, IT, transport & logistics are worth to mention.

However, as key aspects to be covered by AfCFTA national strategies also include the identification of AfCFTA-related risks and opportunities in regional markets, in view of possible regional and global value chain integration, it would be important for the other African countries that are still late in the adoption of such strategies to analyse those already adopted by their neighbours (at the moment, only a policy brief is available that illustrates the main contents of the strategy). It is therefore hoped that soon the document will be soon made public, so to give the possibility to Kenya’s neighbours to develop or fine-tune their strategies in a coherent manner with respect to the document adopted today.