The senior partner and co-founder of Africa Legal Associates, Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, has called on legal practitioners to study the protocols of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) to help clients take full advantage of it.
The AfCFTA is the world’s largest free trade area, targeting a single major trade zone on the continent.
After full implementation, the AfCFTA is expected to boost intra-regional trade to at least 33% from the current 10% of total African trade in the next decade, with a market size of 1.2 billion people and a combined GDP of US$2.5 trillion across the 55 member states of the African Union.
Speaking at a virtual round-table discussion jointly organised by Africa Law Practice NG & Company (ALP NG & Co.) and Africa Legal Associates (ALA), on the theme; “Exploring Mergers & Acquisitions under AfCFTA Competition Policy” Otchere-Darko said lawyers must collaborate to explain the benefits of the free trade mechanisms to their clients.
“Business lawyers on the continent must begin to work together, because if we don’t work together and don’t get involved in understanding the protocols, the rights and responsibilities of economic actors, we cannot facilitate free movement of goods, people and services,” Otchere-Darko.
He said the private sector must “take collective ownership” of the AfCFTA in order for it to work.
Get things started
“The AfCFTA is about the private sector,” Otchere-Darko said. “The private sector includes economic actors such as lawyers, industrialists, traders, transporters … It’s important that we begin to have these kinds of conversations.
“We should begin to interact with the secretariat itself about various governments and push them to get things started,” he said.
The round-table discussion was moderated by the co-founder of Africa Legal Associates, Nana Adjoa Hackman. The AfCFTA secretary general, Wamkele Mene, in a speech read on his behalf, said the secretariat is working assiduously to ensure that the competition protocol becomes law to help remove some of the existing trade barriers.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa says it does not foresee a new tax regime for competition under the AfCFTA.
Over the years, there has been growing interest and calls for African countries to intensify cross-border trade. Nearly four years after its launch, the AfCFTA – signed up to by 44 countries – is yet to realise its main objective of promoting free trade.
Twin-track challenge
Evidence from the Horn, North and West Africa suggests that African countries face the difficult task of pursuing regional integration efforts while lacking the resources or willingness to control their borders.
Thirty-three African countries adopted the AU protocol on free movement of persons in 2018. However, only four – Mali, Niger, Rwanda and São Tomé e Príncipe – have ratified it, far short of the 15 member states required to make the protocol come into force.
The likes of Angola, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, the Comoros, Congo, Djibouti, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Ghana are signatories to the protocol, but are yet to make it work.
The other signatories are Gabon, Gambia, Guinea, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
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