Magister Philosophiae - MPhil / It is necessary to improve on Africa poor and stagnated share of the global trade and to attract
bigger share of the global investments funds to meet the growing developmental challenges.
The bottlenecks at the borders of most countries have made Africa the continent with the
highest cost of trade. This has worsened the competitiveness of the continent’s economy
thereby imparting its ability to draw full benefits from the global trading system. The
introduction of simpler trade procedures is expected to lower trade costs and boosts flows of
goods among African countries and with the global community. It is imperative then to
explore frameworks for innovative trade facilitating instruments within the ambits of the
multilateral trading system to enhance intra-African trade. The idea is to evolve an
Afrocentric framework that will not precipitate retaliatory measures from the trading
partners.
This study encourages African countries policy makers to avail themselves of the
concessionary provisions in the WTO agreement to design a targeted trade facilitation
framework. It is posited that an Afrocentric trade facilitation legal and regulatory policies
are necessary to improve African countries capabilities to trade more with each other and
with other countries at similar stage of development. This must be structured to specifically
facilitate intra-Africa trade via the development of regional or sectoral competitive
advantages rather than the multilateral trade facilitation protocols that is targeted to boost
African trade with the international partners.
A mega-regional trade agreement that will facilitate intra-African trade in the specific
sectors and then use the bigger economies of scale to develop competitiveness on the global
stage, is proposed. Based on the continent abundant agricultural and natural resources, and
the huge and growing young populations, it is found that investments in value creating
manufacturing industries in the agricultural, power and the transport sectors as well as the
service sectors were found to hold the biggest potentials. This is necessary to generate large
jobs and employment opportunities and diversify exports. In these sectors, region-owned
companies in each sub-region to be complemented with private investors are being proposed.
This is necessary due to the huge resources outlay and the poor margin that will not
encourage private investors to commit into this sector.
To protect the companies being proposed without precipitating retaliatory actions by the
trading partners, Article XXIV, the Enabling Clause and the contingent trade protection
measures as contained in Article XIX of the GATT Agreement (the safeguard measures and
the subsidies and countervailing measures) were presented to be sufficient.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uwc/oai:etd.uwc.ac.za:11394/6561 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Rabiu, Ademola Misbau |
| Contributors | Lenaghan, Patricia |
| Publisher | University of the Western Cape |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | University of the Western Cape |
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