 afternoon from Kampara, Uganda, from Africa in general. Good afternoon everyone. It is two past midday. My name is Afrika Chiza and I work with Siatini, Uganda, the Southern and Eastern African trade, information and negotiations institutes. I wish to, I will be your moderator for today's webinar. I wish to welcome you everyone and thank you for having joined us and the others that are still joining. I wish to extend my heartfelt thanks for having committed your time to this important discussion. This first segment of the webinar on the African continental free trade area is organized by Laksimba Stifton, officers of the Islam, Bahrain, Brassos, Dakar and Tunis, and in partnership with Siatini, Uganda and to also with the East African trade network based in Kenya. Today we are going, we are prepared to have a number of distinguished panelists to take us through our webinar on the African continental free trade area, the state of play, and we'll be looking at the readiness, but also the pitfalls in the implementation, lowering out of trading under the African continental free trade area. You will take note that trading under the AFCFTA commenced on 1st February 2021 and there has been a number of hopes and perceptions on what this means especially regarding readiness due to COVID-19 but also due to what some people call an ambitious liberalization agenda that the AFCFTA has which is taking the same trend like all other free trade arguments that focus on increasing trade liberalization rather than focusing on transforming aspects of bolstering production and productivity which are critical in promoting sustainable development. Those are perceptions nonetheless and to take us through whether these perceptions are true, to take us through whether there are a lot of other things that we need to look into is a part of these distinguished guests. One is our keynote speaker, Mr. Prudence Vahisi. Mr. Prudence Vahisi is the chief technical advisor on the African continental free trade area and head of the AFCFTA unit. If we talk about the chief architects of the AFCFTA and the planes behind the AFCFTA then Mr. Prudence is at the helm and at the apex of that. Again we have Dr. Isaac Shinyequa who is the head of trade and regional integration department at the Economic Policy Research Center. Now Dr. Shinyequa is renowned as a research, rigorous research for reputable institutions like the World Bank, International Food Policy Research Institute and the African Growth Initiative of Brookings Institute and the United Nations University but most importantly he is the member of the African Indian Marrable Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Program, the CADAP and is also part of Uganda's delegation whenever we are engaging in trade negotiations at the regional level and at the global level. Needless to say that he is also in charge of spearheading a research on the ESC trade policy and also implication. The policy study on negotiations of free trade agreements with third parties and what this means for the African community. Our third panelist is Ms. Nada Tripe from Tunisian, Tunis who is a political economist and activist who has backed on issues of trade justice for the environmental rights from the perspective of the Arab Maghreb region which is one of the acknowledged building blocks for the African continental free trade area. So without too much ado dear participants, let me start with Prodess. Mr. Prodess, you are the chief engineer, architect of the CFTA. You promised us a lot regarding the benefits we have brought out of trade. Would you please take us through the state of play of the trading, what are the issues you look out for and anything you think that governments need to consider when they are developing their implementation CFTA implementation strategies. Mr. Prodess, please use the floor. Yes, thank you very much, Mr. Kiza for that good introduction, which gives me the courage to speak confidently on matters of FCFTA. Let me also start by thanking the organizers especially Southern and Eastern Africa Trade Information and Negotiation Institute, Siatini and Rosa Luxamburg Stiftank for organizing successfully this event, but more importantly for extending your invitation to me to share with you my experience on FCFTA. In the start doing, I have prepared a short presentation which I want to share with you. I will try to move quickly because time will not allow me to go into the nitty gritties of the presentation, but I will at least touch on the key areas that will respond to your question. As a way of introduction, which you have already done, I would like to remind the audience that on the first of January 2021, we start officially trading under the African Continental Free Trade Area and this can be seen as a very big step, a very big milestone for the continent compared to other stages of integration. This is one of the biggest because the FCFTA is seen as the foundation of African integration agenda. The date of signing, the 21st of March 2018 in Kigali, was also historic. The entry into the first of the agreement in May 2019 was also historic, but the start of trading is more historic, so that's why I said this is a very significant milestone in the African integration agenda. This was officially celebrated by the heads of state as well as other Africans across the globe. Even the business community all over the world was celebrating this event of start of trading. The FCFTA is seen as the savior, as Africa's savior after having tested the COVID pandemic effects. So we believe that FCFTA is going to assist Africa in achieving quick recovery. So we believe that all 55 African members are going to be part of the FCFTA agenda. Today we have 54 who have already signed out of 55 and we have 36 who have ratified and deposited their instrumental ratification and this is a very good indicator that the FCFTA is for all African countries. So in terms of readiness, I have to tell you that the FCFTA is part of a long journey. Africa is moving toward achieving African Union Agenda 2063, which will allow us to have Africa we want, but to achieve Agenda 2063, there are a number of programs and projects that have to be implemented and is one of them. So FCFTA is part of the African Union Continental Integration Agenda and you are familiar with regional economic communities. Regional economic communities are the foundation or the building blocks of this integration agenda and FCFTA comes in as part of the journey. It is expected that after having achieved full implementation of the FCFTA, which is a free trade area, we move to a continental customs union, eventually to a continental common market and the ultimate goal is to achieve African economic community, which will bring together all economic and trade policies and even achieving one common monetary policy for the continent. So this is a long journey, but it's promising. In terms of what we have achieved so far, I would like to bring your attention to the scope of the FCFTA. Wishing the FCFTA has a number of protocols that are attached to it and become integral part of it. There is a protocol on trade and goods, a protocol on trade and services and a protocol on rules and procedures for the settlement of disputes and these three protocols were signed together with the agreement on 21st of March 2018 in Ikigali. We have other protocols that have to be concluded as part of phase two negotiation, the protocol on competition, the protocol on intellectual property rights, the protocol on investment and the protocol on e-commerce or digital trade and we are likely to have in the future a protocol on women in trade to be also added to the number of protocols and as you can see, each protocol also has annexes and appendices, which I may not have time to go into details, but that's how comprehensive the FCFTA legal instrument is. The key milestone that we can celebrate in achieving the FCFTA agenda in February 2012, that's when a decision was made to establish the FCFTA here in Addis Ababa and in March 2018, the agreement was signed. In 2019, the agreement came into force on the 30th of May and in July 2019, the heads of state launched the operational phase of the FCFTA and on the 1st of January this year, we started trading within the FCFTA, which marked actually the actual implementation of the agreement and we are targeting to conclude all outstanding negotiations by end of this year. So these are the key milestones in the FCFTA journey and we hope that we are going to meet the deadline. In terms of scope, for those who are familiar with the trade agreements, FCFTA is comprehensive in the sense that when you compare it to other free trade areas or when you compare it to other integration programs on the continent, FCFTA is probably going to be the deepest form of integration for the continent. This will answer to the question many have been asking whether FCFTA is going to replace the existing regional economic communities. When you go through the checklist of areas that are covered by regional economic communities from elimination of tariff to elimination of non-tariff barriers, SPS measures, trade remedies, and other trade policies and trade related policies that are addressed under regional economic communities. You can see that FCFTA is when you look at the last column of this table, the FCFTA is the deepest form of integration that we may have on the continent. So if we successfully implement FCFTA, then we will be taking a step ahead of existing regional economic communities. And as I said, this is part of the Agenda 2063, among other continental programs on peace and security, political affairs, good governance, and many other programs that feed into Agenda 2063. For trade in goods alone, we have nine annexes, which cover the tariff liberalization, rules of origin, customs cooperation, trade facilitation, elimination of non-tariff barriers, technical barriers to trade, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, transit and trade remedies. Those nine areas have got each their own specific annexes, their own specific legal instrument that govern them. And all those annexes are part and parcel of the FCFTA agreement and they have been concluded. You can look at this map. FCFTA combines a big market compared to other important markets that we know. We are talking about 1.2 billion people in Africa. You can see biggest economies such as Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, having the biggest size of population, DRC, South Africa, and others in Tanzania, some of the most attractive markets on the continent. And you look at Africa, it's much bigger than Europe combined. Europe was estimated at 711 million people, whereas Africa, we are more than 1.2 billion people. The United States is around 300 million people. So Africa is a significant market if we have to achieve this African continental free trade area. In terms of a schedule for tariff liberalisation, which is also an important aspect to bring out, the FCFTA aims to achieve 90 per cent liberalisation as the level of ambition, which has to be achieved in five years for non-list-developed countries and 10 years for list-developed countries. Then in addition to 90 per cent, countries will also have to liberalise their sensitive products over a longer period of time, which is 10 years for non-list-developed countries and 13 years for list-developed countries. So in the next 13 years, we should be able to achieve in total 97 per cent of tariff liberalisation on the continent, and 3 per cent will be excluded from liberalisation, and the criteria to designate products, whether they are sensitive or non-sensitive, have also been agreed on. It will be the choice of every country to come up with that list based on those criteria, issues of food security, national security, fiscal revenue, livelihood and industrialisation. So those are the factors that may justify excluding a product from liberalisation or delaying liberalisation of that specific product. The other aspect that I want to bring to your attention is that currently we have 41 countries that have already submitted their tariff offers, which make about 75 per cent of AU membership, and those countries are here on the list. They are countries within the East African community who submitted their joint tariff offer, ECOWAS members who also submitted their joint tariff offer, CEMAC, which is the Central African Monetary Union, also submitted a joint tariff offer, and SACU, which is the Southern Africa Customs Union, and then those other countries that have added to the four customs unions. We have been able to conclude up to 82 per cent of rules of origin, and as I said 36 countries have ratified the agreement out of 54 who already signed it. So I think this gives a picture on where we are in terms of achieving the FCFTA. I'm trying to explain more about rules of origin, which is a very important aspect when it comes to trade liberalisation. FCFTA rules of origin have come up with what we call product specific rules. It means that each and every product that goes on the market has got its own rules of origin that are applicable. And the rules of origin are applied based on this criteria. One is that if a product is fully produced on the continent, meaning a plant or a vegetable that has been grown on the continent qualifies to be fully or wholly produced from the continent. Live animals, fish, energy that is produced from the continent and others. Then the second criteria is justification of substantial transformation of that product. And substantial transformation can be justified based on the value addition or the value of non-originating materials, the value of raw materials that you import from outside or what we call change in tariff heading. All those justifications have got a threshold on each and every product. So if you are selling milk, then we look at the source of materials and the value addition that you have added. And if there is anything that has been imported, it also has to be meeting the threshold. So those are the criteria in general, but each of those criteria is linked to a specific number in terms of percentage. And we aim to conclude all outstanding rules by end of June this year. Then we have 100% rules of origin on all products that are traded. Here is just a picture of what I was talking about. What we call 82% of agreed rules of origin is about 409 tariff lines. Or products out of 5387 total products that are traded globally, recognized by the World Customs Organization in what they call a harmonized system of tariff heading or tariff coding. So only a few products are still under negotiation to complete 100% of all traded products in terms of defining their rules of origin. This percentage of a 2%, we have also looked at it in terms of volume of trade that is covered. And we have noticed that about 82% of trade that is now on the continent has got already corresponding rules of origin within the FCFT. So there is no fear that the remaining rules of origin will hamper trade because statistics show that the coverage is good enough at least to cater for the next few months before we conclude our standing issues. But in all, we have to understand that by end of June, we have all rules of origin completed. Let me move a bit to trade and services. I have spoken about trading goods. The FCFT also complies agreement on trading goods and I mean trading services. And you can see that the nature of services, every trade transaction is followed by a service. You are trading goods. You look at this is just a picture of supply chain from raw materials to consumer, raw materials, supplier, manufacturer, distribution, customer service, and then to the consumer. This supply chain is a mixture of transaction which involves different services which involve transport services, logistic services, communication services, financial services. So there are a number of services that are embedded into the entire supply chain of goods. And this agreement was looking at trading services because it will have to complement the transaction on trading goods. But it will go further to also look at what we call market access restrictions at national level, allowing service providers to go and provide services in other African countries. So the agreement on trading services looks into different national regulations in a bid to eliminate or restriction that are embedded in national regulations in different service sectors. And when I'm talking about service sectors, you have to understand we have 12 service sectors, business services which include professional services or future related services, research and development, real estate. We have category two called communication services. We have category three construction services, distribution services, education services. I'm just listing for the sake of time, environmental services, financial services, health related and social services, transport and tourism and travel related services, recreational services and other services. So that's the comprehensive risk that is defined for services. So when you go through it, you look at the sub sectors, you understand what type of liberalization is affected by FCFTA. Let me quickly move to implementation matters before I conclude my presentation. Okay, please. Yes. I will try to be brief. We have to ensure that all members are mobilized to achieve 100% signature of the agreement. We have to ensure that all members of the African Union ratify the agreement. We have, of course, to finalize our standing negotiations. But more importantly, there are a number of actions that have to be taken at national level. This includes putting in place and strengthening FCFTA institutions at national level, harmonizing policies at national level, aligning them with the FCFTA legal instrument, as well as undertaking other preparatory activities like coming up with national strategies. We have a number of countries that have already completed their national strategies at national level who are ready to implement the FCFTA agreement. The FCFTA agreement is so complex if you don't relook your national policies, it will be very difficult to appropriately implement it. We also have other complementary activities that will support implementation of the FCFTA. Such as the platform to assist elimination of non-tariff barriers, which is already put in place and we work with stakeholders to assure that all non-tariff barriers are reported and resolved on time. We have what we call the FCFTA tariff negotiation portal, which is online portal used by chief negotiators to assure that they achieve 97% tariff liberalization. We have mobile applications on FCFTA, which are already operating and being used by business community. We are developing Africa trade observatory, which will be the source of trade information on Africa in terms of export imports and other trade measures. There is a Pan-African payment settlement system, which is also being established to assist in transactions to reduce the transaction costs. Studies have shown that Africa is losing about $5 billion annually, related to the transaction costs in terms of currency convertibility. If you sell products in your national currency, you receive money in another currency, then you have to transact to convert again in your national currency. The exchange rate costs up to $5 billion a year for Africa. The Pan-African payments and settlement system will allow to transact directly regardless of the differences in currencies without incurring additional costs. We are also establishing a facility called FCFTA adjustment facility that we assist the members that are negatively affected by trade liberalization. So this facility will put me place credit lines and other financial support to African countries who have difficulties in implementing the FCFTA. Last but not least is the African Business Council, which is now being established as a forum for private sector engagement in the FCFTA. This is an institution for private sector. I have spoken about what has to be done at national level, this one I will skip. I don't want to talk about impact, but let me just summarize this in one slide. This market liberalization, we come with a lot of opportunities. There will be consumer welfare gains. The FCFTA market being a huge market for the continent is going to attract investors, African investors as well as investors from outside. It's going to contribute to job creation. It's going to eliminate poverty and it is also going to assure income distribution. So these are just statements, but which are backed by technical studies. So we have statistics and associated findings on each of those expected benefits for the FCFTA. Are we share with you the slides to see what impact are we talking about when it comes to consumer welfare? What impact are we talking about in terms of attracting investment, job creation, poverty elimination, and income distribution? So in terms of poverty reduction, FCFTA is going to lift up to 100 million Africans out of poverty. This is an estimate by World Back out of their technical research. It's going to ensure income distribution in terms of adjusting salaries among skilled and non-skilled labor among women and men and it is also contributing to job creation in different sectors. So this is what the next slides showing in terms of graphs. But all in all, the FCFTA is going to contribute to economic growth for the continent. It will rise Africa's GDP by 7%, which is actually a good way of setting the impact of COVID-19 pandemic. COVID has affected Africa's economies, but now FCFTA is going to boost that economy by 7%. And if COVID has affected by negative 3%, then you can see that FCFTA is a savior to our continent. So I would like to conclude by encouraging each and everyone to play their role in the implementation of the FCFTA because FCFTA is for the people, is for all stakeholders and everyone has a role to play. And FCFTA is going to take us to the next level of economic development of welfare, of well-being. Last but not least is that FCFTA is an opportunity for Africa. If we don't embrace it, we don't think Africa will get another better opportunity than implementing FCFTA. So thank you very much for allowing me to speak for that long. I have to end my opening remarks here and hand over back to the moderator. Thank you. Thank you so much for this. The presentation was amazing. Indeed, no sooner had you reached the middle than participants were asking for the copy of the presentation. That shows how exciting the presentation was. And yes, the participants, we promised to share sending through this presentation when this time, after this webinar. Joining us after hearing from the elaborate presentation will be Dr. Shinyawa. Dr. Shinyawa, you are coming in to give us experiences from the African community as one of the building blocks which contains clearly acknowledged by the FCFTA. And when we talk about the ESC staff camp community, it comes at a very sad moment when we have lost one of the biggest champions in Africanism or Africa's immigration. One of the biggest sons, son of Africa. His Excellency, Dr. John Pompey McFurry, former president of the Republic of Tanzania. He will be a great remist. And I ask all of you to bear him and be so in your thoughts and in your prayers. We pray that the road grants him eternal rest. Shinyawa. Yes, sir. From that note, when you look at East African community, what are the sum of the lessons we can take from the experiences you have been crafting, the ESC trade policy, you have been spearheading research for implications of negotiating that free trade agreements with other parties on ESC integration and CFTA. You've also done an interesting study at the preparedness of the staff camp community to undertake how to utilize the opportunities that the FCFTA presents as which MSU presents a united fight for us. Chris, in five to nine minutes. Chris, give us a hand with us. Yeah, thank you very much, moderator and SEATIN. Then the organizers, that's to say. Then Rosa Luxberg-Stiftung for giving me an opportunity to participate in this forum. We discussed yet an extremely important topic and aspect of the Africa continental free trade area. Something that we are all extremely happy about and said this is the best that could have happened to us at such a time as the dreams of the people who lead Africa to independence are bubbled in their minds. And as they looked to the future, I think we have reached a very extremely good time and a commend for the presentation made, which gives us straw or whatever food to chew on in terms of where we have come from, where we are standing, and where we are going. And I'll just very quickly move through what my experience of the ESC are as the moderator put it. I just want to summarize it, if I may call it an abstract of a sort, that as we move forward to implement the FCTM, we need to look at internal and external factors that are likely to impede or perhaps make it difficult for us to achieve our goals. And I will outline some of these and discuss this in line with the East African community. But then we just give an idea that Africa hosts about 30% of the world's mineral reserves, that is something to note, about 20% of the global annual production of minerals. And in terms of platinum, cobalt, manganese, and others. And it's an oil producing area with many reserves that are not even exploited. So, and then about 60% of the world is arable land, is found in Africa. When you look at these, they give you an idea that the others outside Africa are looking to see what Africa has been, because they want a very big share of these resources. So that kind of formulates the agenda, the external agenda of the relationship between African countries and the rest of the world, because we attract a lot of attention. That's what I'm trying to say in brief. We look at our global trade, it's only 3%, quite small. We look at our interactive trade within the African continent, it's about maybe 16, maybe to a 19%. And then we look at what do we export to the rest of the world and what do we import from the rest of the world. Like the moderator put it, our analysis for the ESC clearly shows that we export and depend on commodities for our exports with a very limited value addition. And therefore it means we fetch very limited revenue from outside the continent. And then we import products that are manufactured with high technology. So in order for us to realize the dreams of the FCTA, we need to work on things to do with the technology. Without that, it would be a dream, which will remain a dream without realization. Our technology to do value addition is actually a big challenge and a big impingement. Then when you look at what we trade among ourselves, intermediates alone, 88% of intermediates are imported from outside the continent and we do about 2% among ourselves. So these are areas that we need to develop. If we don't, then the dream we are talking about then the income incomes, the employment, we are talking about it will just remain a dream. We need to look into this. So then we have issues. Although we have these frameworks, these are necessary that my colleague elaborated. These are extremely good. They are necessary, they are necessary, but they are not sufficient. Because even in the ESC, we have frameworks to work on tariffs and non-tariff barriers. With tariffs of succeeding, but non-tariff barriers, we are struggling. We even have a law in place, but they keep evolving from one to another. We have had issues of sugar, issues on maize, issues on milk between us and the neighboring countries. What does that mean? If we have these frameworks into place, we need to implement them. We need to respect them to be able to trade. Otherwise, they will just be very nice like pictures in the sitting room when actually the owners of those pictures already passed on and we buried them. We need to be very careful about that. Logistics are extremely poor at the continental level. We need to work on this and security issues need to work on that. If we don't, infrastructure to enable the movement of these goods. This is a very, very, very important aspect. We will not be able to achieve what we want if we can't work on procedure, procedure constraints. All right? Complex clearing procedures, cumbersome documentation requirements. These have to be worked on. If not, then we're not going to realize what we want and predicts about trading policies. These contribute to high costs of trade within the countries. I'll just give you an example. We export more than 80 million dollars worth of maize to Kenya. And recently there was a quick policy about the maize being sold to Kenya. And although the two countries are working out, already farmers have lost quite a loss. Their trade costs have gone high. Some were operating on loans. Of course, we need to work on standards. But in case the standards are not coming forth, how do we handle that? These are issues that we need to. We have a very big issue on ECAMAS. Whereas the global economies are working hard to make sure frameworks are developed, I think we are really behind on this one here. ECAMAS is in this era, is extremely important. What are we doing about this? Because then this will help us. Financing of the secretariat alone, the African secretariat has struggled because of lack of substitution, remittances. Are we going to see this at the African Union? Are we going to see the European Union and other areas financing the secretariat? And yet we are competing with them. This is a very, very serious issue. You cannot compete with somebody and then they are financing all your activities. I think we need to look at that. In terms of improving access to finance for the private sector, there are issues here. Very strong issues. Commercial loans can never help the private sector to be able to borrow and conduct trade. Now we have issues, and this is a strong one. We have so many groups, the European Union. Now we have America. I think Britain signed an FTA with Kenya recently. We have many of these that want to sign FTAs with the African countries, with the African regions. I think we need to look into this. What is the implication of this? And they're coming along with what you call WTO plus requirements, which our countries are ready to do this. And if they go into some of these, we are likely not to benefit. I'll just give an example. We have among the WTO plus requirements that have to do with the on intellectual property rights, that have to do with procurement, that have to do with the settlement of disputes. Now these will mutilate, sort of borrow the what, or make it difficult even to implement the FCT here, because there will be different arrangements with African countries. And already at the ESC level, this is something that we are testing with a lot of difficulty. We failed to sign the economic partnership agreements with the European Union at one point. That one we failed because some countries signed others a year to sign. What are the implications of all this as a continent? We need to look at this. And I think this is to me is something that's very serious. That should be taken on by the secretariat. If anything, even studies conducted, because if we don't, then we shall find the basket or the pail or the container we're trying to draw water with has some holes in its basket. As you draw water from a lake or from a water source, by the time you reach your destination, there's nothing in the container. This is very, very serious. We have issues of migration, labor, and individuals on the continent. Also, we have conflicts. We have refugees. How are we going to handle this? Even if we say we are going to have free movement or persons at the continental level, what kind of persons are going to be moving? Will everybody moving at will? Or we are looking at movement of skills? So these are very, very strong issues that we need to look at. African economies are heterogeneous in nature. Those that are well advanced, those that are in the middle there, those at the bottom. How are we handling this? Otherwise, we are going to create some competitive economies outdoing the less competitive economies. And once this disadvantage is raised, we will be in trouble in terms of everybody coming on board. So this has to be worked on. Where is industrialization policy for the continent? Because economics has shown us that manufacturing growth or manufacturing value added as it grows in the countries, their per capita income increase and poverty is actually reduced drastically and dramatically. And when you look at, East Africa has got an industrial policy and a strategy, but its implementation is an issue. We need to work on that. And I think Sadaq has one. So where is the industrialization policy at the continental level? Because without industrialization, I can assure you our dream will remain on the shelves. It will not be realized because we need to transform our resources that we have that I talked about, that others are looking at and so they find the products. Not be at the value chain level where we are selling only commodities for others to add value and then send back to us. So to me, I think we need to look at industrialization as something serious. We still have skills gaps at the continental level in different countries. We need to build the capacity of our people to work. Let me put it this way. In some region integration groups, they even have people who are trained to work for them. In Africa, we are trained from different universities, some in America, some in Africa, some in Europe, and you bring all this together. Do we have Afro crafts? People who think ideologically like Africans to be able to implement some of these things. This to me is something ideological we need to look at. We don't need to underestimate this. As I perhaps come to almost my conclusion, the willingness of individual member states and their leaders to implement the agreement. We don't have to take this very lightly. In Africa, we are well known for signing and walking away. If we don't have strategies, if we don't have the willingness of the leadership to come up and say we need to realize the FCTA agreement, we may as well be not on the way to achieve what we want. In light of that, we need how the national politics play with the FCTA, the relationship between the institutions, between the national institutions and the institutions at the continental level. This is extremely important to realize what we want. Otherwise, and even aligning of frameworks, aligning of policies so that there are no disagreements between the two. We need to be the capacity to produce. That is extremely important. You can't just have an agreement without the ability to produce to sell. We need to pursue product diversification and sophistication at the continental level. We need to innovate and attract investment at the continental level. We need to adopt very high standards, international standards for products to be able to navigate through. To me, these are some of the issues pointed out, but I'm summarizing them into the external factors, the internal factors. To be able to pull the trade up to around maybe 30, maybe 40 percent intra-regional trade. Maybe that will give us some good results. Moderate have been so fast. Thank you so much. Well, thank you so much Dr. Isaac Shinyokwap for the insightful perspectives. Both your insights and Prudence's presentation triggered a lot of comments and questions which I wish to read before Naga comes in and which will form part of your panel second round of engagement. Seth Kamens is saying how do the rules of origin applied foreign owned entities or those entities resubstantial foreign ownership that may not constitute majority cooperating within member states? And David Virema is asking, he's saying there are both external and internal coherences in the implementation of AFCFTA and he's asking what commitments are countries making with other regions that are going to undermine implementation of AFCFTA? Dr. Shinyokwap talked about those like the FTAs such as the HPS, UK, Kenya FTA, USA Kenya FTA, Ghana UK FTA. So your question is how do these commitments with party parties affect the AFCFTA? He's also asking how does the CFTA link up with other plans like the African mining vision? Or is one of whether you're just looking at tariff reorganization? Fabian Wasson is asking how do we prevent undue influence from corporations not originating from the continent? He's wondering whether the CFTA can be protected from countries and mad nationals misusing African industries. David is asking about the status of program for infrastructure as an enabling factor in the implementation of this trading under the AFCFTA because for his view the current infrastructure is integrating not markets in Africa but rather it is building loads and ports to enable to facilitate exports of commodities to the outside world and imports from the outside world. Leoneida Odombo is asking about the fact that we have mechanisms in place to ensure that most of the vulnerable are protected from unfair politicians like farmers, petty women, traders and all that. And there's also a question coming up from Dr. Kawanda on what is envisioned to be the approach for harmonizing the AFCFTA and the already existing market arrangements. He gives an example of the China, Africa, EU, Africa, Uganda, India. So how would we play with this? And again he's asking how do we how we are integrating informal traders across the African borders? What is the position of the AFCFTA when it comes to integrating informal first border traders? And of course also two questions which are asking about how is the free movement of persons being eased as we are looking at trading under the AFCFTA? What is the question of movement of persons then? There is a question on whether the current texts on rules of origin and tariff shed use whether they are available and if not when they will be able to be available. These texts as you upon and go to those questions are panorisms. I bring in another, another comes with a lot of experience from the Africa, from the Arab Maghreb region which is one of the biggest brocks of the African Union and which are building onto the African continent of retreat area. Now that in your perspective in five to eight minutes do you think that the Arab Maghreb Union is a reliable building brock in the implementation of the AFCFTA? When you look at it some members seeking membership in the EU like Morocco, when you look at the Arab Maghreb region what do you think about it? Thank you very much for your very insightful for this panel and for this very insightful presentations of the guests. Basically we have to start before deciding if the AMAU is reliable or not a block to constitute a part of this what is called the dream of a common trade area, African trade area. We have to look at the level of integration of the UMA itself. So since it's foundation in 1989 we see it's among the least integrated blocks in Africa. We have the sense that it is rather countries that work every country on its own rather than working as a block and countries are rather integrated north to economies like most of their exchange is with the European Union up to 60% of their exchanges are with the European Union then with each other. So some economists in the in North Africa speak about the costs of a non-maghreb. So now we are speaking of a very low integrated economic region because of course of political problems for instance the lack also of political will but also because of because countries couldn't get to a point where they agree on harmonizing of non-tariff barriers and to start trading effectively. So with such a background we cannot say also one of the reasons maybe for the emergence of such a block is to guarantee and defend the interests of the countries of the Maghreb. But we find, for example, these countries negotiate trade agreements that are the most that constitute the bulk of their exchange for instance with the European Union in an independent fashion. Tunisia negotiates on its own, Algeria on its own, Morocco on its own and this and this is where the absence of this body is most felt. And here it is legitimate for us to ask the question of is it really a reliable block when we talk about low integration how do we are these countries themselves imagining integrating or signed the agreement and ratified the agreement or the FCFTA in a perspective of an economic block or by apprehending their personal interests as countries. And this is the case of Tunisia, if we want to take Tunisia as a case study the involvement of Tunisia in the signature and ratification of the AFCFTA was not a regional process but an orientation that Tunisia takes since 2016 and even little before after the after 2011 in the opening up and liberalization of the economy. So it came with the perspectives of deepening a trade relationship with Europe with the DCFTA. It came with a subscription of to the Chinese initiative of Belt and Road. It came with the signature of the Comissari and also it came in the context of speaking of even deepened relationship with the US. So for this country it's a whole orientation that the country takes but it is very interesting now we are speaking about the rules and this dream and also to speak about the acceptability of such a trade agreement among the people that will be most impacted and which Mr Prudence talked about as the people that will be benefiting from the elimination of poverty income distribution and the attraction of investments and which is also not something we can can be sure about despite the numbers we have because especially in the context of weakened economies after the COVID-19 for Tunisia for instance we have 10 percent of companies that shut down and 65 percent of companies that are threatened with a definitive shutdown. We have we are in a situation of crisis and and this aspect of comprehensiveness in the the AFCFTA poses questions as as it doesn't really allow countries to to protect themselves enough we will be speaking when when Tunisia negotiates the DCFTA with with Europe it said it is clearly not ready to liberalize for example it's agriculture also countries of developing countries in the WTO still wanted to slow down and some aspects but these aspects we have the impression that they are I mean in the FCFTA it is we are going rapidly into this liberalization does it does the AFCFTA provide the necessary protection protections for the most weak and most vulnerable in our economies in terms of and and now we know that the African economies that rely extensively on SMEs do these SMEs have the capacity to compete in in such an environment or will it be a trade that will only favor the the biggest actors and so these questions I think should be asked asked I will only end up maybe my my contribution with speaking about the fact that when we when when we started in Tunisia talking about free trade with relationship to Europe the deepening of relationship with with the DCFTA there was a lot of opposition in in the society in Tunisia because of because of the the threat that it may be to open up in an comprehensive manner and to totally harmonize your rules and of trade and to to be able to open your market totally to foreign products that may be more competitive than yours but when we ratified the AFCFTA it didn't trigger this much this much it wasn't that problematic but nowadays lately we have seen the emergence of social movements protesting against the the inflow of agricultural products for example from Egypt and and this is only we are saying this because we say maybe that we didn't talk enough about free trade in Africa as a society or because we we didn't think of our farmers that are very 80 percent small farmers that have very low access to to funding and very low in terms of standards how could they compete if other African products are on the market at a lower price for us so while it may be better for consumers for producers it might represent a threat so these are the questions maybe I wanted to to pose here in this debate and it's very important that we have the two the two perspectives though that of the institutions and that of the people on the ground and thank you very much thank you so much for the insightful views and perceptions dear participants yes we take note of your questions on the availability of the presentations and the recording and I would like to assure you that yes we shall provide this both in email to your respective emails and also there will be a variable on the rosa website that is www.losalax.eu now we have 20 minutes to the end of this webinar and this takes us the second segment of the week of the webinar which is the panel a lot of comments a lot of questions most importantly have come up and I have read some of those questions and I would wish to start with the same order produce there are a number of questions regarding the how rules of origin with how they whether they apply to foreign owned entities regarding infrastructure the role of infrastructure and now it is whether it is integrating african economies to support the CFTA there are the issue of integration of informal correspondence traders in the CFT and the smallholder farmers and most importantly also the issue of the issue of movement of workers movement of persons how is movement of persons working with with with hand to hand with the movement of goods and like I said all the questions in the chat so Mr produce you may answer all the questions or you may answer a few of them and you I'll give you five minutes please thank you very much kids I think by giving me five minutes we'll serve me uh from respond to the most difficult questions so I will leave them to other panelists um yes the questions are many but let me just share my perspectives on each of them with regard to rules of origin applying to foreign entities uh first of all you have to understand if you are an investor you can invest then once you invest your product we go to the market so foreign entities that will invest in Africa produce from Africa will also qualify for the AF safety rules of origin so it's just a matter of their production base I think this one answers to the question what will be the approach to harmonize AF safety with other outside regional uh outside uh free trade areas let me answer to this together with the the one who asked about uh countries making commitment with the third parties first of all the AF safety is a free trade area so which means that it is the verizing trade among the parties but it is not affecting trade relations of the parties with third parties so AF safety is looking at trade liberalization among African countries but it is not affecting trade relations between one African country and one European country or one Asian country or or the US but the relationship between one African country and the third party country may affect the AF safety so the provision of the AF safety that addressed the issue states that if you are having a preferential trade arrangement with the third party you have to extend the same preferences to the rest of AF safety members so if you give example if Kenya is negotiating FTA with the US once the FTA is concluded all preferential to go to US should be extended to members of AF safety if Mauritius is doing the same with India they make sure that the outcome of negotiation will also be extended to AF safety members and this has to be done on basis of reciprocity so a country that giving you better preference than the general preference of the AF safety has to be also uh reciprocated I'm trying to be quick um the relationship between AF safety and African mining vision cadet program free movement of people PIDA let me talk about them together yes there is a relationship all these are continental programs AMV African mining vision is a continental program which looks at the beneficiation of the natural resources so by addressing the issue of natural resources you are contributing to the value addition to developing continental value chains which will lead to what AF safety aims at so the AMV policy is looking at the first stage of production which will assist AF safety which will assist to boost intra-african trade rather than taking raw materials outside without processing them you have to process them on the continent produce for what is needed on the continent but even if you sell the processed products then you add value to the wealth of the continent the cadet is about agriculture as well agriculture again is the basis for production so AF safety is dealing with products with the commodities all products that are processed from agricultural products are going to the AF safety market so if we can produce if we can stop importing food from outside produce our own food we are contributing to the welfare of the continent the free movement of people is part of the factors of production even if we have a separate continental framework or protocol infringement of people but implementation of that protocol is exactly complementing the AF safety and soon or later we'll be talking about african common market which will also include movement of factors of production the issue with PIDA one person talked about out outward outward oriented infrastructure that the PIDA program the program for infrastructure development for africa is looking at the ports and whatever that look for exports and import of goods from outside I think I tend to agree with you the historical background of infrastructure development on the continent was based on colonial legacy but I think the task of AF safety is to reverse that trend look at infrastructure that we live african countries because infrastructure is one of the pillars of the AF safety infrastructure industrialization those are the two main pillars of AF safety so the programs of PIDA have to be looked and address the infrastructure gap linking african countries I think the last one is about how does AF safety address the issues of most invulnerable people let me look at it together with one person who asked about human rights the benefits of the AF safety have looked at income distribution poverty reduction people's welfare so the policies to address the issues of the most invulnerable people have to be at national level in a bid for a country to implement AF safety policies you have to put in place a strategy and you have to make sure that your strategy looks at the production process what products let me give you one example how many people are involved in the cocoa value chain in Ghana how does Ghana come up with a strategy that will assist everyone involved in the cocoa value chain to benefit from their safety market by securing market for cocoa products and ensuring that farmers processors are also getting value from the AF safety market rather than producing for export and maybe not getting the value of what they have produced so the issues of human rights issues of most invulnerable stakeholders have to be addressed by national strategies so that's in a nutshell what I have to say in five minutes thank you thank you so much for this oh yes there is a lot I have a feedback should have been a two-day conference there's a lot that is really being here and we need to know Dr. Shinyeko in the three minutes yes to respond to some of the questions that were raised okay I think Prudence has more or less dealt with the questions that I wanted to respond but I will just say one or two three things one they cut up the compressive african culture development program is an extremely important program for us as it tries to address trading agricultural production there are many other things in there it addresses encouragement of free movement of persons within african continent try to address poverty issues and it is but from an agricultural angle an agricultural angle so and it's in its third phase right now the first and the second phase are over and we end the third phase we'll go through this up to I think 2025 to see if we are achieving the target set by the marable declaration now on the issue of africa or african countries relating or signing FTS with the other other countries or regions within the global community um this one is a very tricky one because these are sovereign states that have agreed to enter these FTS and therefore nobody has a right to stop them the only thing is in all the analysis that done before entering two such arrangements these need to understand what are the likely effects I'll just give you an example if we sign if say one of the countries when the ESC signs an FTA agreement with the say the united states they are likely to be areas which may affect the region as any as a as a customs union for that matter because where the if the african content of the trade area is at an FTA level some of these rakes are already at a customs union level so when you negotiate their issues that are likely to affect say the the the common external tariff or when the goods come in say an example if a lot of maize comes in from the US into one into one of the ESC countries what happens those were saying maize to another country if milk comes in those are issues that need like I said from the start that need to be studied to understand implications then another very serious point many of these FTAs have got should I call it a format that has got WTO plus issues and in most cases main african countries are not likely to be ready or in a position to have the competencies to deal with some of these issues and some of them have really been very problematic I just want to give you an example if we signed an agreement where this the dispute settlement mechanisms involves state to company company I mean you are likely to see a state to state dispute settlement mechanisms you are likely to see many countries losing cases and therefore required to pay very colossal amounts of money so what I'm saying is that whereas it is okay to enter FTAs agreements with other countries and regions there are issues that must be closely be looked at otherwise they are likely to be a very big problem as you're winding up there's a question here which I think you could answer you could respond to yes the issue of every guy every godfather of equal use Africa is asking how SMEs who constitute majority of traders in Africa would be able to trade across the borders or in the CFTA maybe you could attempt to that in your last party shot yeah exactly this this is a actually I was going to to that one quickly we in some of these our countries you have SMEs occupying a space of 80 70 percent of production and therefore these are very interesting entities until they are protected they are natural they are helped they have a lot of problems to be able to penetrate maybe through the business councils or so through the private sector foundations within these countries and associations these have to be helped otherwise they may not be able to compete SMEs in China for that matter have been told they're about 70 SMEs when you look at how the states how the state helps them in terms of resources in terms of looking for market in terms of helping them even to go out there's even a go out of China policy for them that gives an idea that SMEs will not survive without sufficient help there must be deliberate programs to look at their financing look at their ability for them to produce and a bit for them to market otherwise they will not be able to compete favorably so my my thinking is this need special attention thank you so much Dr. Shinokawa for the insights and before we go to the closure closing remarks another when you look at Arab market union and the EU and the CFTA what are your partitions on that tripartite relationship between the EU and the CFTA please your partitions two minutes it's it's very interesting here not only to talk about the relationship between Europe the Maghrib countries and the African continent but also all other companies that can that can be that can have their headquarters in some region and and then let me give you a simple example Tunisia in 2018 wanted to pass a law in the parliament that modifies definition of what a company a Tunisian company is defined of how a Tunisian company is is defined in Tunisian law and it gives the right to to any foreign capital to to come establish itself in the country and become a Tunisian country and become a Tunisian company so by these rules any any European or American company can establish itself in Tunisia and then start trading with the rules that are that Tunisia uses in in trade so also there are programs like when we introduced the AFC-FTA there is there has been a lot of talk about this program called Prosper Africa last year and how Tunisia can be for example an entry point to the African continent continent for foreign companies and this may constitute an opportunity for Tunisia as a single country but it may constitute also a threat for other countries or small producers so it is very interesting to know also from that if this represents if this is one of the things that was taken into consideration in the establishment of the rules of the AFC-FTA. Okay thank you so much Nader and as we come to the end of this I would wish to call a distinguished and seasoned negotiator the current of the competition authority for Kenya Ambassador Nelson Delango to give us his words of wisdom to give us his thoughts on the CFT but also across this webinar. Ambassador you are most welcome and please the mic is yours. Ambassador. Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts in a very few minutes about the AFC-FTA but let me start by saying hello to Prudence. I don't think we have seen each other for about two three years. Yeah hello. How are you? Nice to see and hear your voice again. Nice to see you too and let me just say that we should pay more attention to the AFC-FTA than thinking about third parties and what have you because our industrial base will actually depend on how much we trade within ourselves. The other form of trade relations has been tried for a couple of years decades to say but we haven't moved much. We have an opportunity now as Africa to trade within ourselves and even to start industries that will be able to absorb our own goods. So in this respect I think AFC-FTA comes at the right time and we should embrace it and I hope that soon all the 55 countries of Africa will be put to this agreement. Now regarding the third party trade agreement I have this to say. I am not disagreeing with what Prudence has said but there are two things that we need to take into consideration. One, whatever we do regarding countries signing with third parties that should not undermine the African continent of free trade area. That is important that we don't undermine what we are doing within ourselves. The second one is to remember that within the AFC-FTA trade agreement I think there is a provision and Prudence talked about it and this provision talks about a country if it signs. For example Kenya has signed a bilateral FTA between between itself and the UK. It is not automatic that other AFC-FTA countries must enjoy the benefits but if there are countries within the AFC-FTA that are interested in enjoying the benefits created by that relationship between Kenya and the UK they are free to do so and Kenya will allow them but only conditioned that they also receive pro-kit and I think Prudence has made it very very clear. Now there are a few things that we need to address within the AFC-FTA to make it work and work very fast and I think migration is one of it. I think we do have a treaty on that but we can look at what has happened within the some regions. For example within the East African region there is free movement of people between I think between Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda and you'll be surprised we did not see an upsurge on that and we can use that as an example now to extend to the whole of Africa so that the businessmen can start moving and investing across the continent. Then of course I think there is somebody who asked a question about whether the AFC-FTA protects local industries. I think it does because you have trade remedies within the treaty and there are specific rules that a state party has to follow to be able to provide that protection. So I think I should leave it there because it wasn't my turn to give a speech but just to make a small comment. Thank you very much. Thank you so much Ambassador Dario Hekizek. Thank you Ambassador Nielango for your words of wisdom and for your guidance and thoughts on this subject and for crossing us. I will not move or I will not go beyond your official cross remarks just one housekeeping the announcement that we shall be sharing every the YouTube the link on the for this Zoom meeting is on the YouTube. We shall be sharing the presentation and the recording also in your personal emails but also it shall be on the on the website and lastly to remind you that should you be interested in this conversation we shall be looking at the issues of CFTA in the context of finance and external interest on the 6th of May 2021. I encourage you to join in, I encourage you to keep the discussions and I encourage you to also keep safe and healthy. On behalf of the organizers, I think you can come back and relax and back. There are slums, Bahrain, Dhaka, Tunisia and Brussels offices. I would like to thank you so much and wish you a present evening or afternoon or morning wherever you may be coming from. Thank you so much and stay well. Thank you to Africa. Thank you. Bye to everybody. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye. We cannot hear you. Maybe we can end with now and I will send a Zoom meeting for next week and we can meet where I discuss about our webinar. Is it all right? Of course. Okay. I think many has left. See you. Sorry. Did you say something? Yeah, Africa. I will send you a Zoom meeting invitation and maybe we can meet next week and talk about it. Okay, that would be great. Thank you. See you next week. Bye bye.