In the face of mounting global environmental challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, and increasing focus on environmental, social and governance (ESG) awareness, sustainable trade practices and supply chains have the potential to radically transform Africa’s economic future.

From green logistics to fair trade and circular economy principles, sustainable trade practices have a significant positive impact on global and local trade. In addition to environmental benefits, they enhance market competitiveness and open access to new markets that value a commitment to sustainability.

However, the transition to eco-friendly and sustainable supply chains is reliant on several factors, not least a significant investment in the infrastructure and technology needed to streamline port and customs operations and ensure a smooth entry of goods into the country in question. An understanding of the importance of digital transformation by governments and regulatory bodies is also a key factor in adopting digital solutions over more traditional manual systems.

African countries that understand and embrace these requirements are well on their way to laying the groundwork for sustainable trade practices.

As an example, the port of Cotonou in the West African country of Benin handles an average of 80 to 90 merchant vessels monthly. According to the African Development Bank, Cotonou deals with 90 percent of the country’s international trade, serving up to 100 million consumers. In 2022, the port handled 12.5 million tonnes of goods, a figure that is predicted to almost double by 2038, reaching 23 million tonnes.

In a gesture of confidence, the recent extension of an €80 million loan by the African Development Bank for significant infrastructure upgrades will expand the port’s operations even further. Yet despite the vast and complicated operations of one of Africa’s busiest ports, Benin has jumped to 66th place on the World Bank’s Logistics Performance Index, an astonishing leap of approximately 100 places in just under a decade, positioning the country as West Africa’s key trade hub.

But this wasn’t always the case. High shipping costs, low efficiency, and poor logistical facilities threatened to stifle any hopes the port had of becoming a key trade route, despite the fact that the country is a crucial transit route for West Africa, connecting millions of people in the landlocked countries of Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, and the northern regions of Nigeria.

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The solution? Leveraging technology to break through the complexities, inefficiencies, and obstacles impeding effective trade, and transform Benin into an economically competitive trade hub.

This is a story that replicates itself in trade ports along Africa’s entire coastline. Operators and customs entities are constantly looking for ways in which to alleviate the backlogs and delays caused by the high volumes flowing through these trade entry points, and digitisation, along with improved physical infrastructure, is proving to be an extremely effective solution. Partnerships and collaborations with specialist service providers hold the key to success.

The Webb Fontaine and Benin story
Backtracking from the current situation, and highlighting the importance of long-term public-private collaborations in modernising and streamlining trade landscapes, Webb Fontaine started working with Benin’s Ministry of Finance and Benin Control in 2017. Implementing a suite of innovative solutions including Webb Single Window, Webb Transit Tracking, Webb Valuation, Webb Ports, and Webb Customs, we are proud to be playing a pivotal role in transforming trade in the country.

Webb Single Window has been a game changer. It forms the basis of GUCE Benin, a digital platform with over 6,500 users in the logistics chain that facilitates import, export, and transit operations, and incorporates electronic payment via Paylican, Webb Fontaine’s official payments partner. Webb Single Window has also automated the processing of key administrative operations like issuing licenses and authorisations, overseeing currency exchange operations, managing exemptions, and communicating with tax services.

In practical terms, this means streamlining the process needed to get containers out of the port. Digitising processes to create efficiencies, using new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), reduces the time spent on clearance of goods, for both customs brokers and administrators. Benin now ranks as West Africa’s top port and holds the third-highest rating in Africa behind Egypt and South Africa. Release times have been reduced by 30%, with a remarkable 50% of containers being released within only two days.

Along with operational efficiency at the ports themselves, economic growth is a key benefit. From digital skills development to higher revenues as a result of streamlined operations, technology is playing a crucial role. For example, reducing the clearance time from 47 days to only a few days allows for more cycles of importation, increasing tax revenue and creating a healthy economic cycle. This also attracts foreign direct investment, making the port more attractive for investors and traders.

However, the use of technology in port operations is just one aspect in a larger framework of sustainable trade. The resultant benefits, such as automated systems and data analytics have the potential to lead to more efficient operations, reduced emissions, and less waste, which are all key components of sustainable trade practices. For instance, quicker turnaround times not only reduce the carbon footprint of shipping and logistics operations, but they also reduce the need for extended storage, in turn decreasing energy consumption and waste.

Is Africa ready for sustainable and eco-friendly supply chains?
Despite the challenges faced by African countries, many are making great strides. Togo’s new container platform, Nigeria’s planned green port, Liberia’s green economy reforms – all are notable examples. Yet much still needs to be done to fully embrace the digital transformation journey, while at the same time addressing issues like infrastructure development.

All stakeholders have a role to play in implementing sustainable and eco-friendly trade practices and policies. African governments, for instance, can make a commitment to investing the funds and resources needed to create infrastructure that will support both trade and digital advancements, as well as support sustainability initiatives. The African Continental Free Trade Area can play a crucial role in developing a standardised approach to these issues, based on learnings from other countries on the continent.

Africa is a continent that has immense potential when it comes to creating and maintaining sustainable trade practices that will drive economic growth. The continent’s success stories demonstrate this, and serve as a call to governments, industry stakeholders, policymakers and the private sector to work together to find tangible solutions that will promote further growth and development. Webb Fontaine is already playing a crucial role in supporting Africa’s governments on their trade facilitation journeys, with specialised port technology that is securing customs revenue, mitigating trade fraud, and streamlining clearance times. In the same way, when all stakeholders collaborate and contribute to improvements in their respective areas, Africa’s economies will reap the collective rewards.

To read the article as it was published on the CIO Africa webpage, click here.

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President Ruto needs to show to his people that democracy delivers for Kenya. The United States has been a strong supporter of this goal. We can still do more.

Kenya is one of our most critical allies on an increasingly important continent; a booming population means that within a decade, 1 in 5 people on the planet will be living in Sub-Saharan Africa. While the rest of the world gets older, the median age in Africa is only 19. African countries have massive reserves of critical minerals, renewable energy, and arable land. It is their human resources, however, that are most valuable and some of the fastest growing in the world.

Someone who understands these facts well is U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Meg Whitman. In the burgeoning tech hub of East Africa, Whitman has been a tireless cheerleader for Kenya’s economic growth and potential. She has championed its growing manufacturing sector and its compelling use of renewable energy sources, which power most of the country’s energy needs.

Whitman’s approach is exactly what’s needed in Africa as a whole: an enthusiastic U.S. push for democratic ideals coupled with equitable economic growth. Through the bipartisan African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), the United States has for two decades provided broad market access to sub-Saharan African countries and encouraged U.S. private sector investment. It also incentivizes good governance, workers’ rights and the rule of law. In Kenya, AGOA has jumpstarted the emergence of a promising apparel sector, creating job opportunities and economic growth.

Unfortunately, AGOA expires next year. Without an early reauthorization, global industry may turn away from opportunities in Africa. That’s why Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) and I introduced the AGOA Renewal and Improvement Act of 2024 last month. This bill would extend the program to 2041, providing businesses the long-term certainty they need to move their supply chains away from China and invest in Africa.

Kenya is more than just part of a growing economic bloc, however — it is an example for its neighbors in a rapidly changing part of the world. Kenyans have fought hard to be a democracy on a continent that has more coups than any other. A country that is already facing the effects of climate change, Kenya has stepped up to the plate as a partner in conservation efforts. In this, too, the United States can do more. By bolstering public-private partnerships in communities that manage protected and conserved areas, we can protect the environment while investing in the people who live in and around these natural wonders.

Kenya is also a critical security partner both within Africa and beyond. Last year, the U.S. and Kenya signed a five-year defense cooperation agreement, strengthening the already strong relationship between our armed forces. Whether it’s partnering on counterterrorism efforts in East Africa, the anti-Houthi task force in the Red Sea, or the Multinational Security Support mission to Haiti, the United States and Kenya are working together on strategic goals not just for our countries but the world. This week we will reaffirm our security partnership, particularly in the face of a growing Russian footprint in Africa.

The United States has also prioritized delivering on better investments in development and offering an alternative to China’s debt-trap diplomacy. China far and away dominates trade with Africa, investing three times as much in the continent as American counterparts. To this, the United States has an answer: the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC). By investing early in companies, the DFC can provide the funding needed to ensure new ideas and innovation can succeed without opaque and high-priced Chinese loans.

The tests Kenya faces are echoed across the continent and the globe. Their approach is rooted in a belief in democracy, in expanding opportunity, and collaborating with partners, including the United States. It’s a testament to President Biden’s leadership that he recognizes that a close relationship with Kenya is essential to our country’s success, and that a state visit from a Kenyan president sends a signal of our seriousness.

This visit is smart and strategic for both President Ruto and President Biden, and reflects a collaborative, forward-thinking perspective on tackling the urgent global challenges of our time. Ever since I first set foot in Nairobi 40 years ago, a bright-eyed college student, I knew I had entered a special, dynamic place full of potential. Now the rest of the world sees that, too. This state visit demonstrates American commitment to Kenyans — not just for this week, but for generations to come.

Chris Coons is the junior senator from Delaware and is a member of the Foreign Relations Committee.

To read the full opinion piece as it appears on the The Hill, click here. 

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At the 20^th African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) annual forum in Johannesburg last week, the United States (US) government and Congress, African trade ministers and business representatives, organised labour and civil society agreed it should be reauthorised before expiring in 2025.

When AGOA was last renewed in 2015, it seemed that might be the last renewal, and that this concession should be replaced by a conventional reciprocal free trade agreement (FTA) or several FTAs. AGOA gives eligible sub-Saharan African countries duty-free access to the US market for most products without having to reciprocate. A decade later, no such FTAs are in prospect, not least because the US has gone off free trade.

So, faced with the alternative of no preferential access for Africa after 2025, both sides of the Atlantic seem committed to extending AGOA. The only questions are the period of renewal, and how to ensure more African countries can benefit.

Constance Hamilton, Assistant US Trade Representative for Africa, said before the forum that AGOA ‘has not met the expectations we had in 2000,’ when it was founded. Though some countries have benefitted, AGOA hasn’t been a ‘game changer for the continent’ in boosting its overall economy and regional integration.

So the forum discussed ways to bring in more countries – this after the number was reduced from 35 to 31. Niger and Gabon will be ejected from 1 January 2024 because of coups, and Uganda and Bodog Poker Central African Republic for undemocratic behaviour.

However, the priority is renewal. Participating African countries’ trade ministers called for an extension of at least 10 years, and retention of all current beneficiary countries to preserve value chains and support Africa’s industrialisation efforts.

The forum heard that apart from the benefits to Africa, AGOA also supported 155 000 US jobs. The US also backed the programme’s renewal through statements or video messages by President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and several congressional leaders of both parties. That bipartisan support is vital as reauthorisation would happen in Congress.

And just after the forum closed, Democratic Party Senator Chris Coons – an influential friend of Africa on the foreign relations committee – released a draft bill to renew AGOA until 2041. ‘This long-term extension would provide businesses with the predictability needed to invest in Sub-Saharan Africa at a time when many firms are looking to diversify their supply chains and reduce dependence on China,’ Coons said.

His bill proposed several changes to expand AGOA’s usage, reflecting many issues discussed at the forum. For instance, to extend the programme and integrate it with the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), Coons’ bill would modify AGOA’s rules of origin to allow inputs from North African AfCFTA members.

His bill would also keep more countries in AGOA by only ‘graduating’ them out when they have maintained high-income status for five consecutive years. This would avoid removing some countries and letting them back in if their economies fluctuated around the high-income threshold – as Mauritius recently did. The draft bill also proposes that the current annual eligibility reviews of all 49 sub-Saharan African states happen only every three years.

However, Coons’ bill has a sharp sting in the tail. It intends to eject South Africa from AGOA by calling for an immediate ‘out-of-cycle’ review of the country’s eligibility. The move reflects resentment on both sides of the aisle in Congress about Pretoria’s warm relations with Russia, Hamas and its sponsor Iran.

Stephen Lande, President of international business advisers Manchester Trade, supported the bill – but as the first step to renew and then enhance AGOA. He told ISS Today that South Africa’s Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Ebrahim Patel made the same proposal at the end of the forum. Prompt renewal would avoid a decline in orders in AGOA’s most successful sector (garments assembled from Far East fabrics), since it takes about two years to complete an order.

But Lande said the changes in Coons’ bill wouldn’t correct some of AGOA’s major challenges. He proposes giving the US administration more discretion in deciding which countries should be removed, instead of being forced to remove those that fall foul of the bill’s conditionalities. At present, more than 10 of the 49 countries are not eligible for AGOA benefits.

‘The Administration should be able to weigh the advantages of removing a country versus the collateral damage. For instance, allowing a dictator to scapegoat the US for his own failings, or letting China in, or harming the very groups AGOA is designed to assist (women in the sewing trade who have been harmed by AGOA suspensions in Madagascar and Ethiopia), or disrupting supply chains.’

Lande said he would also ease the rules of origin, which now require 35% value added in the AGOA member country for the product to qualify. He noted that with components becoming more expensive relative to labour, the 35% threshold was unrealistic. Lande said he would allow duty-free imports of processed cocoa products that currently incur punitive tariffs as they contain dairy products and sugar.

He would designate all AfCFTA members as members of AGOA if they were otherwise eligible – and not just include them for cumulation of inputs as Coons proposes. This would embrace North African countries that aren’t currently part of AGOA.

All these proposals would deepen and extend AGOA benefits. However, Lande’s proposal to give the US administration more discretion to consider other strategic factors, like deciding whether or not to expel African states for bad behaviour, would provoke difficult ethical debates.

Is it better to incentivise democracy by expelling countries for undemocratic behaviour – at the cost of greater African economic advancement and integration? Or to prioritise economic development, believing this will eventually boost democracy? A perennial imponderable.

To read the full article, click here.

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Few U.S. presidents have done as much as Joe Biden to strengthen ties with African nations.

Last December, the president hosted nearly 50 African leaders for a three-day summit in Washington. During the meeting, the administration committed to invest at least $55 billion in Africa over the next three years, including private sector initiatives of more than $15 billion. Since then, various senior U.S. officials, including Vice President Kamala Harris and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, have visited the continent. Biden has also pledged to visit before the year is out.

But when it comes to one of the most important issues on the administration’s agenda—climate change and the transition to a green economy—Africa is missing. As a result, the United States is forgoing an opportunity to deepen commercial ties with the continent, partner with African nations to strengthen supply and production chains, and diversify away from its reliance on China for more than 50 percent of 26 critical minerals.

This message is implicit in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), signed into law last August. One of the act’s key provisions is a tax credit available to American consumers who purchase electric vehicles whose batteries contain a certain percentage of critical minerals extracted or processed in the United States or in any country “with which the United States has a free trade agreement.”

Currently, the United States has 20 free trade agreements in effect but only one with an African nation: Morocco, which has the world’s largest known reserves of phosphates but few other known critical minerals. Moreover, the Biden administration has gotten out of the business of negotiating free trade agreements in favor of nonbinding trade and investment frameworks. As a result, there is little prospect that strategic minerals from Africa will contribute on a significant scale to the U.S. energy transition anytime soon. Given the Biden administration’s push on climate change and its desire to prioritize relations with the continent, the administration should redouble its efforts now to include African nations in its energy transition.

Currently, the United States relies most heavily on China for imported mineral commodities but also Germany, Brazil, South Africa, and Mexico. China also dominates the global market in refining strategic minerals. According to a recent study by the Brookings Institution and Results for Development, China refines 68 percent of nickel globally, 40 percent of copper, 59 percent of lithium, and 73 percent of cobalt. China also accounts for 78 percent of the world’s cell manufacturing capacity for EV batteries.

Africa is home to 30 percent of the world’s critical mineral reserves, many of which—cobalt, lithium, manganese, graphite, and nickel—are essential to renewable and low-carbon technologies. The Democratic Republic of the Congo accounts for nearly 70 percent of the world’s supply of cobalt.

Under the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, Africa has an established framework for engagement and has made clear its desire to be a contributing member to global value chains in the processing of critical minerals as well as manufacturing. Africa also has a comparative advantage in the production and early processing of some EV parts, such as battery precursors.

The Biden administration and Congress have made a strategic error in not providing a way for African nations and their critical mineral supplies and value chains to produce for the U.S. market on an incentivized basis.

If not rectified soon, the IRA will have the unintended consequence of lessening U.S. commercial ties with Africa and ceding the African market in critical minerals to other nations—such as China.

Congress and the administration could rectify this situation by amending the IRA to include not only countries with which the United States has a free trade agreement but those African nations that participate in the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). The legislation offers duty-free access to U.S. markets for countries in sub-Saharan Africa that meet certain conditions on governance, human rights, and labor protections.

Currently, 36 African countries participate in the AGOA, including those that produce or are known to have the critical minerals that the United States will need for its energy transition, such as Zambia, Namibia, Tanzania, Gabon, Kenya, South Africa, and Niger (for now) as well as Congo. Discoveries of critical minerals are likely to be made in other African nations. Including AGOA-eligible countries in the IRA would provide Washington with a greater number of suppliers of critical minerals and encourage investment in sectors that are a priority for African governments.

During last year’s summit with African leaders, a memorandum of understanding was signed with the Congolese and Zambian governments in which the United States pledged to support the development of a value chain in EV batteries in the two sectors. By including all AGOA-eligible African nations in the IRA, the U.S. government would be deepening its own commercial relationship with the continent as well as enhancing its capability to access the critical minerals it needs for its energy transition without giving greater influence and market share to its adversaries.

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In response to the cumulative economic and security fallout that has ensued, some advanced countries are now ramping up efforts to divert their supply chains away from countries that are not like-minded and that don’t have shared common values.

This new supply chain strategy is called “friend-shoring.” Advanced countries are creating friend-shoring alliances which are, in turn, reshaping our global economy.

These shifts have adverse implications for Africa. The approaches to reconfiguring supply chains currently unfolding threaten to heap more stress on a continent already weighed down by multiple crises.

Africa stands to lose out because the current reshaping of supply chains is not intended to shift trade, investments and jobs towards African trade partners. Rather it’s got to do with efforts by the EU and US to insulate their supply chains from being disrupted for geopolitical reasons by less trusted partners with significant global market share in key raw materials, commodities and other essential products.

Steps can be taken to mitigate the negative economic effects that will be imposed on Africa by this supply chain reorientation. These include forging strong and effective friend -shoring alliances with the advanced economies and defending the rules-based multilateral trading system.

The push for a friend-shoring strategy

In the US, friend-shoring as a policy goal was first proposed by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in April this year. In her remarks on the way forward for the global economy, she identified friend-shoring of supply chains as a strategy that could achieve two outcomes. Firstly it could securely extend market access. Secondly it could simultaneously lower the risks to the US economy and its trusted trade partners.

Then during a tour of East Asia in July, Yellen sought to promote the US administration’s proposed friend-shoring policy first in Tokyo and later on in a speech delivered in Seoul. She said:

In so doing, we can help to insulate both American and Korean households from the price increases and disruptions caused by geopolitical and economic risks.

Aid for Trade initiativeAnd during a recent visit to Japan and South Korea, Vice President Kamala Harris emphasised the importance of friend-shoring. Speaking in Tokyo she said:

…it is important that we and our allies partner in a way that allows us to grow, and in a way that allows us to function at a very practical level.

US President Joe Biden has been pushing the same supply-chain strategy in Asia. A centerpiece of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework he unveiled in Asia is bolstering regional supply chains as part of Washington’s efforts to strengthen ties with trusted Asian partners. And to counter China.

The framework is also a big deal for the US because it brings together economies that contribute nearly 40% of global GDP. Along with the US, its other key members include Australia, India, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and several Southeast Asian countries.

The Biden administration also unveiled a new US strategy towards Sub-Saharan Africa in August. But, in sharp contrast to the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, it does not include any specific and concrete friend-shoring commitments for African countries. And appears mainly to be another counter play against China and Russia—the US’s two top adversaries.

The push to diversify supply chains is also underway in Europe. According to European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, nearly half of companies had diversified their supplier base by the end of 2021. As the world’s largest bodog poker review single market, the EU is able to use its strong regional base to diversify supply chains within the bloc.

While the COVID pandemic certainly played an important role in spurring the shift from dependence to diversification, the war in Ukraine was a tipping point for Europe from an economic and security standpoint. It further intensified the drive to diversify supply lines away from Russian suppliers of critical commodities, especially energy, food, and fertiliser. The strategy is to friend-shore them to countries deemed reliable and with shared strategic interests.

Africa stands to lose out

Africa has nothing to gain from the current reshaping of supply chains. This is because US and EU friend-shoring initiatives heavily favour Asian and Indo-pacific partners. Winners from these initiatives include Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and other Indo-Pacific countries deemed to be trustworthy. Their economies will benefit from the boost given to trade, production plants, jobs and investments.

In addition, friend-shoring also threatens to undermine the World Trade Organisation’s Aid for Trade initiative. This was launched in 2005 to assist developing countries reduce trade costs and thereby enhance export competitiveness. Its significance has steadily increased in the years after it was launched. At this year’s WTO meeting in July, Aid for Trade discussions focused on helping Africa and other developing countries recover and build long-term sustainable development by supporting priority needs they had identified.

These needs include trade facilitation, digital connectivity, export diversification, connecting to value chains, and women’s economic empowerment. They also focused on how environmentally sustainable development can contribute to achieving these priority needs.

Reconfiguring supply chains in ways that exclusively lend a helping hand to current US and EU manoeuvring will only make it more difficult for Africa to benefit from WTO support in these important areas.

What’s to be done?

Looking forward, there are at least three essential things that can be done to mitigate negative impacts on Africa.

First, effective friend-shoring alliances should be included as a centerpiece of the new US strategy towards sub-Saharan Africa. African policy makers should strongly urge the Biden administration to do this and demonstrate commitment on their part to be trusted partners.

Second, the EU should also develop an effective friend-shoring strategy with African partners, even as it pushes for an expansion of intra-bloc supply chains. Again, it is paramount that African policy makers take the lead and justify the importance of entering into a strong friend -shoring relationship with the EU.

Finally, defending the rules-based multilateral trading system is important to ensure that it continues to deliver benefits for developing and least developed countries, including those in Africa.

To read the full post, please click here.

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• The new African Continental Free Trade Area is the first large-scale agreement on deep integration in Africa to cover areas such as services, investment, competition policy, intellectual property rights, and digital trade.
• The convergence between regulatory frameworks under the agreement and those of the EU will have a significant influence on European companies’ competitiveness in Africa.
• The EU should respond to the changes the agreement has brought about by engaging in greater cooperation with Africa as a bloc.
• This will require a more coherent approach to EU trade agreements with individual African countries, including through a revision of rules of origin.
• There are many opportunities for EU-AU cooperation on a new trade agenda, particularly the role of trade policy in the green and digital transitions.
• Through technical cooperation and exchanges of experiences, African countries and EU member states should promote mutual understanding of their approaches to regulation.

Introduction

Trade and investment relations with Africa are increasingly important to the European Union’s strategic goals. Given their geographic proximity and historical ties, the EU and Africa should both seek to build the foundations of comprehensive and mutually beneficial economic cooperation – as this would have economic and political benefits in everything from job creation, migration, and security to the green and digital transitions. The EU should engage in such cooperation: it is Africa’s most important trading partner, accounting for around one-third of African trade, and is a vital source of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the continent. Nonetheless, players such as China and Russia have increasing influence on the African commercial landscape, and could weaken the position of the EU as Africa’s leading economic and political partner.

In this context, EU policymakers should view the recent creation of an Africa-wide market under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) as an opportunity to consolidate and strengthen commercial and geopolitical ties with Africa. The AfCFTA, a flagship project of the African Union’s Agenda 2063, is a blueprint for a prosperous Africa that promotes regional integration and structural transformation as a source of inclusive growth, decent jobs, and sustainable development. Given its comprehensive and ambitious scope, the AfCFTA could be the first large-scale effort at deep integration in Africa. The AfCFTA seeks not only to liberalise intra-African tariffs and other traditional barriers affecting trade in goods (shallow integration) but also to address domestic regulatory measures with respect to services, investment, competition, intellectual property rights, and digital trade (deep integration). The degree of convergence between EU and nascent pan-African regulatory models will be critical to the commercial and geopolitical ties between Europe and Africa. Regulatory convergence can lead to the harmonisation of rules of operation and governance, and to an increase in cross-border production chains.

The eventual creation of an African economic community could involve not only a continental customs union with common external tariffs, but also the harmonisation of broader economic policies for all African countries. An African customs union and economic community could shift the EU’s engagement with Africa away from trade cooperation with individual countries and towards that with another bloc. The EU has concluded 16 free trade agreements (FTAs) with sub-Saharan African countries and four with North African states – more than any other power. Yet many, if not all, of these agreements have done little to develop rules that would create a level playing field in areas such as services, investment, competition policy, and intellectual property rights. By contrast, China has only signed one FTA with an African country (Mauritius) but exerts its influence on a wide range of trade issues through non-traditional instruments such as memorandums of understanding.

The EU has an interest in ensuring that the AfCFTA creates markets in Africa that are open, fair, rules-based, and competitive. European firms are increasingly concerned that they will be displaced from these markets by Chinese, Indian, Middle Eastern, or Russian rivals that can benefit from lower technical standards for products and direct government support at home. The rules, regulations, and governance of the trading system under the AfCFTA – and its convergence or compatibility with European standards – will therefore determine the competitiveness of European firms in Africa. Moreover, the AfCFTA can create the conditions for new investment opportunities beyond Europe’s traditional focus on the extraction of Africa’s natural resources. With a stronger regulatory framework for investment, competition, and intellectual property rights, European firms could not only capitalise on the size of African markets but also local advantages such as low labour costs and links to production and trade with the rest of the world. In short, Africa could become a global hub for manufacturing and exports. This may be a particularly attractive opportunity in the aftermath of covid-19, as European firms look to strengthen their supply chains by diversifying them away from Asia and near-shoring them.

This paper explores ways in which the EU can enhance its economic leadership in Africa through mutually beneficial cooperation on trade and investment. This is important to not only the EU’s bilateral relationships with African states but also to its efforts to protect common interests in international forums. Encouragingly, both the EU and the AU have started to explore more shared initiatives in light of the AfCFTA. However, they have yet to jointly set out a substantive approach to such cooperation.

The EU and the AU should implement a dual-track strategy that strengthens their traditional forms of trade and pursues a new agenda. The first track will require the EU to harmonise its existing FTAs with African countries and work to align the development aspects of these agreements with the effort enshrined in the AfCFTA to promote African countries’ exports of more sophisticated goods and services. In this way, the EU can build a balanced partnership with Africa.

The second track will require the EU to cooperate with African countries on the forms of deep integration laid out in the AfCFTA – starting with services, investment, competition, intellectual property rights, and digital trade. Such a partnership for deep integration will be crucial to creating a level playing field for European countries and firms. Furthermore, the AfCFTA will set a precedent for the international trade system under the World Trade Organization (WTO) that both sides support.

In making a case for a dual-track strategy, the paper examines the structure and significance of the AfCFTA; the interaction between the AfCFTA and the EU’s FTAs with African countries; and the current elements of EU-AU cooperation that could become building blocks of deep integration under the AfCFTA. By implementing this strategy, Europe and Africa can promote sustainable development, stability, and security in both regions.

Structure and significance of the AfCFTA process

Established in January 2021, the AfCFTA is a remarkable trade agreement in many ways. It includes more signatory countries than any other such agreement since the establishment of the WTO. At the time of writing, Eritrea is the only one of the 55 members of the AU not to have signed the agreement.

Diverse trade partners

African states have largely driven the ambitious, large-scale effort to establish the AfCFTA. They include developing countries and 33 of the 46 states that the United Nations classifies as the ‘least-developed countries’ due to their low level of income and their severe structural impediments to sustainable development. These countries have limited experience and capacity in conducting technically demanding negotiations, and have traditionally been exempted from reciprocal trade liberalisation in multilateral agreements. For example, East African Community states aside, most African countries had never negotiated the comprehensive liberalisation of services in a trade agreement other than in the WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), which dates back to the mid-1990s. Mauritius is the only African country that took part in negotiations in the 2010s on a proposed Trade in Services Agreement.

Moreover, despite being widely referred to as a ‘South-South’ trading arrangement, the AfCFTA brings together countries that are significantly different in their levels of development, economic structures, societies, cultures, and politics. The enormous asymmetries among AfCFTA members add to the complexity of conducting an integration process of this scope.

Unprecedented speed and commitment

Despite the difficulties of integrating many heterogeneous partners, the AfCFTA has been negotiated and ratified with surprising speed and commitment. African institutions have pursued continental integration for many decades, but their past efforts were heavily geopolitical. The AfCFTA has brought a fresher, commercially oriented approach.

AU heads of state and government launched the initiative in January 2012 at a meeting in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. They made the decision to establish continental free trade, leading to six years of negotiations on how to achieve this. Fifty-four countries signed the AfCFTA between 2018 and 2019; only one party to the talks – Eritrea – has not done so. The AfCFTA entered into force in May 2019 for the 24 countries that had ratified it at that that point. As of February 2022, 41 of them had done so. The AfCFTA is not in effect for countries that have yet to ratify it. Those that have ratified the agreement could start trading with one another in line with the tariff concessions and rules of origin it specifies. But, while the agreement became operational on 1 January 2021, there have been delays in negotiations to finalise tariffs and rules of origin. So, in practice, the parties have not yet begun to trade under the AfCFTA regime. Agreed rules of origin currently cover 87.7 per cent of products as defined in the AfCFTA’s lists of tariff rates. And the completion of these negotiations is scheduled for June 2022. When the new trade regime begins, it will effectively remove 90 per cent of trade tariffs. In the following five to ten years, the AfCFTA will liberalise trade by an additional 7 per cent to cover “sensitive products” – that is, those excluded from general tariff liberalisation. As the exclusion of 10 per cent of tariff lines under the agreement could represent a significant share of trade, it remains to be seen which goods this will cover.

It would be premature to declare victory now, at a time when the AfCFTA free trade regime is not fully in place and some of its details are still unclear. Nonetheless, African countries have achieved a lot in the past decade as they move towards a comprehensive and deep FTA.

The progress of the AfCFTA in the past two years is especially impressive given the effects of covid-19, which has complicated and slowed negotiations, and a global retreat from trade integration. The AfCFTA emerged against the backdrop of the indefinite delay of Doha Round negotiations under the WTO; Brexit; countries’ withdrawal from FTAs such as (in the case of the United States) the Trans-Pacific Partnership; a failure to conclude large-scale plurilateral and bilateral negotiations on deals such as the Trade in Services Agreement and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership; and difficulties in ratifying FTAs that have already been signed, such as the Bodog Poker EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement. On trade, Africa has moved in the opposite direction to most of the rest of the world.

Africa’s first deep integration agreement

Yet perhaps the most important aspect of the AfCFTA is that it is the first agreement in Africa to comprehensively cover deep integration – the expansion of trade policy from traditional goods-only barriers, such as tariffs and quotas, to a broader range of domestic regulations. While there is no universal definition of the term ‘deep integration’, it normally refers to FTAs that cover at least four core areas: services, investment, competition policy, and intellectual property rights – all of which have a strong domestic regulatory dimension. Deep integration shapes the rules for companies operating in Africa on everything from the recognition of professional qualifications and environmental standards in investments to the role of government support and state-owned enterprises. The more these rules align with policy and standards in the EU, the easier it will be for European companies to expand their presence in Africa. Without regulatory standards as high as those in the EU, non-European firms will continue to displace EU companies. In other words, the compatibility of EU and AfCFTA regulations will help determine the competitiveness of European exports and investments in Africa, as well as the overall strength of trade and investment ties between Europe and Africa.

Moreover, while deep integration used to be a characteristic of FTAs between members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, most deep integration FTAs signed since 2000 have been between developed and developing countries, while just one-third of them have been between developing countries. But Africa has not contributed to the former trend: the vast majority of African FTAs are shallow integration agreements, meaning that they focus primarily or exclusively on traditional goods-only barriers. Of the eight sub-regional agreements recognised by the AU, only one – the East African Community – covers services. Deals such as the Southern African Development Community’s Protocol on Finance and Investment pursue deep integration issues, but not in the comprehensive manner of so-called ‘twenty-first century agreements’. The AfCFTA may be the first African twenty-first century agreement with a fully fledged deep integration agenda.

Empirical evidence from recent years shows that FTAs are heterogenous – not all of them boost trade to the same extent. Agreements that cover deep integration are associated with greater trade flows, whereas those limited to shallow integration do not. These studies show that the expansion of global value chains is strongly associated with deep integration arrangements. This can be explained by the fact that these value chains require market access (trade) and market presence (FDI), both areas in which domestic regulations are important. As scholars such as Richard Baldwin have demonstrated, the complementarity between services, investment, and knowledge creation is an important part of trade deals that expand regional and global value chains.

The AfCFTA integration process is structured in three phases, all of which cover important aspects of deep integration. One of the more unusual features of the deal is that, from its first phase, it liberalises trade in goods and services in parallel – a departure from the standard practice of sequencing goods before services. This reflects an appreciation of the fact that goods and services are intertwined: as services are a key input in the production of goods, they determine the competitiveness of manufacturing and agriculture. In this regard, one important facet of the AfCFTA is its inclusion of a Protocol on Trade in Services, which contains the agreement’s basic principles for liberalising trade in services. Negotiators plan to finalise the market access schedules for services by 30 June 2022. Although it remains to be seen how far this liberalisation will go, one remarkable element of the protocol vis-à-vis the GATS is that it does not treat developing and least-developed countries differently.

The second phase of the AfCFTA process, which is already under negotiation, will create new protocols on investment, competition policy, and intellectual property rights. Given that none of the protocols in these areas has been completed at the time of writing, it is difficult to assess them. But the scope of the negotiations indicates a coherent approach to such issues. Indeed, measures on investment are closely linked to those on competition and intellectual property rights. Hence, the negotiation of these protocols in tandem can help ensure that policies in these areas complement one another.

The third phase, which has not yet begun, will be devoted to digital trade. As the AfCFTA’s digital trade agenda has a broad scope, this phase could also touch on a variety of issues.

This road map for deep integration has two particularly significant features. Firstly, there is widespread consensus that most of the potential gains from the AfCFTA will come from the removal of non-tariff measures and other elements of deep integration. As services are subject to greater protectionism than any other aspect of trade and FDI, this is the area in which liberalisation can yield the largest economic benefits. And the removal of barriers to services prompts less trade diversion than the liberalisation of tariffs. Beyond such increases in economic efficiency, deep integration is associated with economies of scale, stimulus of investment, and greater competition and innovation.

The other key feature of deep integration under the AfCFTA is that it sets a precedent for future negotiations involving African countries, including those with its European partners in bilateral arrangements and under the WTO. Unlike tariffs and other barriers at the border that can be applied on a preferential basis for different trading partners, many domestic regulatory reforms linked to deep integration are de facto applied on the basis of most-favoured nations and national treatment – that is, without discrimination between foreign trading partners or between domestic and foreign firms respectively. Accordingly, once a regulatory reform begins at the domestic level, it will mould the commitments a country may be willing to make in future trade agreements. The negotiations and reforms that 54 African countries are undertaking through the AfCFTA integration process will inevitably influence their commitment in future FTAs with the EU, as well as with other members of the WTO under the multilateral trade regime.

Interaction between the AfCFTA and other African trade agreements

The establishment of the AfCFTA has implications for pre-existing trade agreements in Africa, both at the sub-regional level in the framework of Regional Economic Communities, as well as between African countries and extra-regional trading partners such as the EU. As discussed, the EU has far more trade agreements with African countries than any other external partner. It is important that European policymakers understand how these agreements and future ones can shape the AfCFTA integration process.

The benefits of open regionalism

The existence of parallel and even overlapping trading arrangements is not unique to Africa: in the past two decades, there has been a worldwide proliferation of regional and bilateral accords that created multilayered trade regimes. The experience of countries that operate in such multilayered trading landscapes suggests that the response should not be to reduce the number of FTAs but to ensure that they are coherent and complement one another as the building blocks of broad liberalisation.

The concept of open regionalism emerged from Asia-Pacific efforts to address these challenges of complexity. This openness, a departure from the inward-looking focus on import substitution that prevailed in first-generation regional trade agreements, involves a greater emphasis on outward-oriented and internationally competitive strategies. The concept was later endorsed by Pacific countries in Latin America as a way to promote the convergence of diverse initiatives at the subregional, regional, and hemispheric levels, and to adopt an orientation towards the rest of the world based on less rigid, non-exclusive trading partnerships.

On a large scale, FTAs are often vital building blocks of deep integration. These agreements can function as experimentation labs for deep integration, as they have produced many measures that have gone on to be adopted more widely. Even the first agreements on non-tariff measures under the WTO – which concerned technical barriers to trade and sanitary and phytosanitary measures – emerged from deals between smaller numbers of countries in the Tokyo Round of talks on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). It is hard to believe that these and other aspects of trade regulation would have developed without these initial steps. In this sense, the coexistence of FTAs among smaller groups of countries can help develop the AfCFTA, particularly as it expands to new regulatory horizons in keeping with the demands of a rapidly changing global economy.

Furthermore, not all trade-related issues lend themselves to continent-wide cooperation. Sometimes, international cooperation is most effective on a bilateral or sub-regional scale. For example, there may be little benefit in countries in southern Africa negotiating transport facilitation measures with those in the north of the continent. Such issues are best addressed in sub-regional arrangements rather than the AfCFTA.

But this is not the only reason why regional and bilateral agreements will complement continental arrangements under the AfCFTA. This is the case also due to increasing political cooperation between African states on issues ranging from human rights and disarmament to nature conservation.

Yet, while there are clear benefits to open regionalism, it is important that this openness does not divert attention away from the AfCFTA or otherwise delay or complicate its implementation. It is also important to avoid duplication and inconsistency between agreements, which can raise administrative costs for governments and create confusion and uncertainty for businesses. Therefore, while open regionalism can create useful synergies within the continental integration process, these benefits are not automatic – they require policy coherence and consistency across co-existing trade agreements.

Policy coherence and consistency in the AfCFTA

The AfCFTA addresses the importance of policy coherence and consistency with existing – and, presumably, future – FTAs in Africa. Article 3 of the agreement discusses the need to resolve the problem of “multiple and overlapping membership”, but it does not provide further guidance or mechanisms for doing so. For example, the AfCFTA does not specify whether it or another agreement takes precedence in cases of inconsistency in commitments and rules.

Article 5 of the AfCFTA explicitly describes the FTAs of the Regional Economic Communities (REC) grouping as its “building blocks”. The AfCFTA states that it aims to preserve – and, if possible, improve – what has been agreed on trade within the grouping. Moreover, Article 12 of the AfCFTA specifies that the REC “shall be represented in the Committee of Senior Trade Officials, in an advisory capacity”.

While more precise plans and rules will be required for the REC to blend into the AfCFTA’s architecture, this is a clear recognition of its role in shaping the agreement. Yet the REC contains vastly different models, with some of its members not having signed FTAs with one another and some claiming that the grouping is a customs union or even a common market. So, the REC model for the AfCFTA is unclear. The AfCFTA’s recognition of the need to co-exist with the REC in the long term reflects a desire for different regions to pursue deeper or complementary policies that are tailored to local needs (in areas such as environmental programmes, energy, water, policing, nature conservation, and political cooperation).

The REC’s trade arrangements are the only ones the AfCFTA explicitly describes as building blocks. That said, Article 19 of the AfCFTA states that its signatories “that are members of other regional economic communities, regional trading arrangements and custom unions, which have attained among themselves higher levels of regional integration than under this Agreement, shall maintain such higher levels among themselves”. Accordingly, the AfCFTA stipulates that it will co-exist with regional trading arrangements and custom unions such as those under FTAs between the EU and African countries. The AfCFTA does not abolish any EU trade arrangements with African states or prevent them from expanding or deepening these arrangements.

The constructive role of EU-Africa trade arrangements

The EU’s plethora of trading arrangements with Africa would benefit from greater alignment with those under the AfCFTA and the REC. They could do so in the following ways.

A whole-of-Africa approach

One of the challenges of moving to an intercontinental strategy is that EU trade policy on Africa is fragmented – in terms of its treatment of least-developed and developing countries, and of countries to the north and south of the Sahara. These differences in the EU’s multitude of African trading arrangements could deter region-wide integration. Moreover, the economic and geographical divisions in these arrangements may be outdated or operate differently from the AfCFTA and other AU initiatives. The fragmented approach can create challenges for EU trade policy in engaging with Africa as a single region.

The EU reformed its Africa policy at the turn of the century. Under the successive Lomé Conventions (1975-2000), the EU provided African, Caribbean, and Pacific exporters with greater market access than it had under the Generalised System of Preferences that it applied to other developing countries. These preferences were challenged under the GATT because they involved discrimination between developing countries. In response, the EU adopted in 2001 the Everything but Arms (EBA) initiative, which granted duty-free and quota-free access to most products from least-developed countries. In contrast, the EU policy on states other than least-developed countries focused on the negotiation of economic partnership agreements (EPAs) to preserve this market access. The Cotonou Partnership Agreement is part of the EU’s trading framework with 79 countries in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific.

The split in treatment of least-developed countries and other states in sub-Saharan Africa created tensions and difficulties in the EU’s negotiation of economic partnerships with the REC. Most members of the REC are least-developed countries, which have no incentive to participate in reciprocal negotiations with the EU. This explains why the union’s EPAs have limited scope even when they carry the name of the REC. For example, the EPA with the Southern African Development Community only includes six of its 16 member states (and will include just four in its second phase). bodog poker review In other instances, the union has negotiated EPAs with a group of countries that does not correspond to the REC, such as eastern and southern Africa. Given that trading arrangements under the REC act as building blocks of the AfCFTA, the EU should align its agreements with the grouping.

In North Africa and the Mediterranean, the EU’s many trade regimes include Association Agreements, Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Areas (DCFTAs), and the Generalised System of Preferences. Given that the sub-regional arrangements would have been complicated by tensions between North African countries, it is understandable that the EU concluded bilateral trade agreements with Tunisia (1998), Morocco (2000), Algeria (2002), and Egypt (2004). These agreements are part of the Barcelona Process and the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, which form part of the European Neighbourhood Policy. Following the 2011 Arab uprisings, the EU launched new negotiations on DCFTAs with Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt. Although some DCFTAs seemed to progress well – particularly that with Tunisia, which advanced in the negotiation of services – they have also run into difficulties and suffered from the same problems as EPAs.

The problem with negotiating free trade agreements individually is that, in the absence of coherence and coordination between them, this approach risks fragmenting tariff regimes across Africa. One of the problems with EU agreements in Africa, even under EPAs, is that they have different rules of origin – which can complicate the expansion of supply chains. Therefore, the EU should revise rules of origin in its trade agreements to remove an obstacle to intercontinental integration.

Making structural transformation a shared development goal

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the EU’s transition from a donor-recipient model to partnership-driven cooperation indicate that Europe and Africa should pursue a common development model in their trade relations. The AfCFTA and the AU’s Agenda 2063 emphasise the importance of FTAs in structural economic transformation. For several reasons, EPAs can inhibit such transformation by making it more difficult for countries to implement targeted industrial policy. After decades of EU-Africa trade relations, two-thirds of African exports to the EU are of primary goods and raw materials. Similarly, EU investments in Africa are largely in the extractive sector. In contrast, intra-regional trade is characterised by the movement of more complex goods and services. There is a widespread perception that decades of trade cooperation with the EU have failed to nurture the structural transformation needed to spur productivity growth.

Classical economic theory dictates that, in conditions of perfect competition, free trade is optimal for small economies. Yet, given that most African economies experience domestic policy distortions or market failures, they may benefit more from restrictions on trade and FDI. Nonetheless, if all African countries were to take such an approach, the outcome would be inefficient on a continental scale. Furthermore, as the effective application of strategic trade and FDI policy has substantial informational requirements, attempts to address market failures with trade policy instruments can lead to governance failures. For this reason, it is often wise to avoid using such instruments.

However, Asian countries such as Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan have used these instruments effectively – as have those in other regions. Therefore, African states should be given the policy space to use second-best trade policy instruments while they develop more effective measures, such as stronger competition policy advanced under the AfCFTA. The WTO allows exceptions under ‘infant industry’ and other provisions that apply to developing countries. The EU’s trade arrangements in Africa could be more flexible on the use – where justified – of strategic trade and FDI policy to promote structural economic development.

Building blocks of the new trade agenda

While it is straightforward to conceive the building blocks of a traditional, goods-focused trade agenda (in areas such as rules of origin), the EU needs to engage in innovative thinking about how to do so for deep integration. Given that an intercontinental FTA is a long-term objective, it is important to go beyond tariff concessions and rules of origin to promote cooperation on the trade agenda of the future. Much of the challenge in trade policymaking in the subsequent phases of the AfCFTA will centre on regulatory issues – especially in areas such as services, investment, competition, and intellectual property rights. Cooperation on these deep integration issues will be critical to ensuring that European firms compete in African markets on a fair and equal footing. Moreover, these policy domains are vital to the green and digital transitions.

In developed and developing countries, services account for almost half of world trade – and this share is growing fast. As discussed, one of the most important achievements of the AfCFTA is that it intertwines goods and services. This reflects African policymakers’ increasing appreciation of how transactions costs created by inefficient services reduce African economies’ competitiveness and development. Moreover, most African workers – including most women and staff of small and medium-sized enterprises – are employed in the service industry. As a result, services are indispensable to inclusive growth.

All these trends indicate why EU and African policymakers need to create new ways to cooperate in services trade. The EU should use its extensive experience in dealing with regulatory issues as a building block of the AfCFTA. However, instead of expecting African countries to adopt EU regulatory models, the union should help them create robust regulatory frameworks of their own. This will be particularly important in technological development (especially the growth of the digital economy), which will lead to greater convergence in the sides’ policy reforms.

Conclusion: Convergence between EU trade policy and the AfCFTA process

The AfCFTA has created a new layer of complexity in African trade but also new opportunities for mutually beneficial economic cooperation between the EU and Africa. The EU needs to revitalise its trade strategy for Africa in response to the agreement. This is even more crucial due to the impact of covid-19 – which has hampered trade and FDI flows, and has created incentives to diversify and near-shore global supply chains. The EU also needs to contend with the fact that competition from China and other actors poses an increasing challenge to European companies that operate in Africa. The union’s efforts in these areas should run along two parallel tracks: the traditional agenda and the new agenda.

Traditional trade agenda

The EU needs to unify its trading regimes with African countries (under the EBA, EPAs, DCFTAs, Association Agreements, and the Generalised System of Preferences) and ensure they are consistent with the AfCFTA. This undertaking should focus on the revision of rules of origin – which is particularly timely given that the AfCFTA negotiations on this issue will conclude in the coming months. Harmonised rules of origin would be an important building block of the traditional trade agenda.

As the AfCFTA lacks a customs union and the sovereignty to negotiate trade policy on behalf of AU members, talks on intercontinental market access will not be possible in the near term. In the meantime, the EU’s attempts to standardise EPAs and DCFTAs should help pave the way for a unified trade policy regime in Africa.

The AfCFTA is concerned not just with the expansion of trade but also with upgrades to the structure of trade and FDI. This is important given the empirical evidence that countries trading in complex goods and services have higher GDP growth than those that do not. By ensuring that FTAs create space for targeted industrial policy, the EU would promote economic convergence between Europe and Africa while supporting the development objectives of the AfCFTA.

New trade agenda

There is an urgent need for innovative thinking on how to create new building blocks of a trade regime covering services, as well as its connections to the green and digital transitions. The challenges of the AfCFTA will increasingly concern deep integration. This is an area in which the union’s bilateral EPAs and DCFTAs have room to grow. The EU should learn from these arrangements as it develops a fresh approach at the continental level.

Many African countries lack technical expertise and experience in deep integration. Therefore, by providing capacity-building in the form of exchanges of experiences and peer learning, the EU can work with these states to develop a joint understanding of how regulatory cooperation would benefit Africa. As African countries have sometimes perceived EPAs as imposing an EU regulatory model, the union will need to focus on cooperation that is useful for Africa (in areas such as cross-border transport, green energy, and digital trade) and capacity-building on various approaches to regulation. This would allow African countries to assess the benefits of adopting international standards, pursuing regulatory equivalence initiatives, and implementing effective certification procedures.

The AfCFTA’s new Services Protocol provides a point of departure for cooperation on these issues – as does the market access schedules the agreement should include by June 2022. The EU could become a uniquely valuable partner for Africa by supporting its shift towards trade and investment in services, and towards the digital economy. For instance, the expansion of services in areas such as energy will be critical to the green transition in Europe and Africa.

The EU can help improve connectivity in Africa by investing in both the soft elements of infrastructure, such as the provision of services and their regulatory underpinnings, and physical infrastructure. And it can engage in cooperation based on capacity-building in areas such as competition policy, intellectual property rights, and digital trade. The EU has a wealth of experience with these issues that can inform and nurture the AfCFTA process. Closer collaboration between Europe and Africa on these topics can help them develop a shared understanding of the regulatory challenges and responses in an increasingly complex global trade regime.

Iza Lejarraga is a trade policy expert with more than 15 years of experience in international organisations, academia, and the private sector. She has worked as a senior economist in leading international organisations, including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the African Development Bank, the World Bank, and the Organization of American States.

To read the full commentary by the European Council on Foreign Relations, please click here.

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The Summit was an effort to have the two Unions form a new partnership, and for the EU to be the partner of choice for countries in Africa. The joint declaration from the summit is included below and reviews the broad areas of discussion and agreed actions to be taken by the two Unions following the Summit.

The discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing discussion on the WTO’s consideration of a response to the pandemic (both trade and intellectual property) was one of the important issues at the summit. The joint declaration discussion of the issue is copied below.

“The immediate challenge is to ensure a fair and equitable access to vaccines. Together we will support local and regional mechanisms for procurement, as well as allocation and deployment of medical products. The EU reaffirms its commitment to provide at least 450 million of vaccine doses to Africa, in coordination with the Africa Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT) platform, by mid-2022. Contributing to this and complementing the actions of the AVATT, Team Europe has provided more than USD 3 billion (i.e. the equivalent of 400 million vaccine doses) to the Covax Facility and to vaccination on the African continent.

“Team Europe will mobilise EUR 425 million to ramp up the pace of vaccination, and in coordination with the Africa CDC, to support the efficient distribution of doses and the training of medical teams and the capacity of analysis and sequencing. We will also contribute in this context to the fight against health-related disinformation.

“Learning from the current health crisis, we are committed to supporting the full-fledged African health sovereignty, in order for the continent to respond to future public health emergencies. To this end, we support a common agenda for manufacturing vaccines, medicines, diagnostics, therapeutics and health products in Africa, including investment in production capacities, voluntary technology transfers as well as strengthening of the regulatory framework to enable equitable access to vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics.

“The African Union and the European Union underlined the urgency of the WTOs contribution to the fight against the pandemic and to the recovery of the global economy, and commit to engage constructively towards an agreement on a comprehensive WTO response to the pandemic, which includes trade related, as well as intellectual property related aspects.”

The European Commission’s President Ursula von der Leyen statement at the press conference on February 18 provided the timeline for reaching agreement with the African Union on the WTO response package to the COVID-19 pandemic, including finding an acceptable path forward on intellectual property. The EU and AU will be meeting in the Spring to find a mutually acceptable solution. President von der Leyen’s comments at the press conference on this topic are copied below.

“And finally, from the health of our planet, to the health of our people. Europe is Africa’s number one partner in the fight against COVID-19. And we will do even more. We are on the right track to reach our goal to share at least 450 million vaccine doses by this summer. And indeed, together, we are building up mRNA manufacturing capacity across Africa. I will not go in detail because we have discussed that in the press conference this morning.

“But important is that we had a very good, intense, constructive discussion on the question of TRIPS waiver and compulsory licencing. We share the same goal. We have different ways to reach that goal. There must be a bridge between those two ways. And therefore, we have decided that the two Commissions – the African Union Commission and the European Union Commission – will work together. We will organise a College-to-College meeting bodog poker review here in Brussels, in spring. And at that time, at the latest, we have to deliver a solution. This will be accompanied by the WTO, Director-General Ngozi. And therefore, I always like it when a task is clear and defined. The task is set for the two Commissions. The frame is clear, the goal is clear, we have to deliver.”

Statement by President von der Leyen at the joint press conference following the 6th European Union-African Union Summit, Brussels.

The European Union has been working for most of the last year on moving towards significant vaccine production capacity being built in Africa. President von der Leyen’s statements at the start of the EU-AU Summit and her statement at the Vaccine Equity for Africa event on February 16 provide significant detail on actions the EU is taking to help Africa develop vaccine manufacturing capacity as well as address the build up of health care infrastructure on the continent. 

Parts of the February 16 speech are copied below.

“This year already, at least two of these container factories will move to Africa. To Rwanda and to Senegal, where I visited last week the Institut Pasteur de Dakar. Close cooperation is ongoing with South Africa’s Biovac Institute. And with our partners in Ghana. We are advancing in record time. Commercial production is set to begin in 2023.

“The ‘Vaccine Equity for Africa’ project is only possible thanks to teamwork. Starting with Africa’s declared ambition to build its own vaccine production capacity. Teaming up with a European innovation champion such as BioNTech. Supported by the European Union and the African Union. Governments in Europe and Africa. And the UN system. This is how we emerge from the pandemic and build a stronger future for Africa and Europe.

“The initiative is first and foremost about vaccine equity. Vaccines from the new factories will be sold at not- for-profit prices, exclusively to African countries. They will be made in Africa, for Africa, with world-class technology.

“At the same time, this initiative can advance public health and industry, well beyond the pandemic. We know the mRNA technology is revolutionary. It holds promises for the fight against other diseases, like malaria and tuberculosis. BioNTech factories can be adjusted within weeks to make different vaccines. It could thus be an African-made solution to diseases that currently kill millions.

“This project is part of a larger ambition. By 2040, the African Union wants that 60% of the vaccines used on the continent are manufactured on the continent. The European Union fully supports that goal. Together with our Member States and financial institutions, we have committed over one billion euros in financing. To strengthen regulatory frameworks, and transfer skills and know-how. Because regional capacities are the cornerstone of global public health.

“And the project goes even beyond public health. Building this technological capacity in Ghana, Rwanda, Senegal and South Africa – countries that are regional leaders in innovation – will strengthen the innovation ecosystem on the entire continent.”

Documents from the European Council and European Commission at the conclusion of the Summit provide the EU’s view of the healthcare portion of the summit and EU actions.

(“In the margins of the European Union-African Union Summit, the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced the first six countries that will receive the technology needed for the production of mRNA vaccines on the African continent. Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia all applied and have been selected as recipients. The announcement was made at a ceremony hosted by the European Council, France, South Africa and the WHO in the presence of the following leaders: Charles Michel, President of the European Council, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission. President Macron, President Ramaphosa, President Sall, President Kenyatta, President Buhari, President Saïed and President al-Sisi.”); 

While vaccines and health issues were just one of a number of important topics reviewed during the Summit, it has been the focus of this post simply because the outcome and promised meeting in the Spring between the two Unions offers the hope of a resolution to the WTO’s ongoing negotiations on a pandemic response package — one that covers various trade actions as well as what, if any, actions are needed on intellectual property rights during a pandemic. While the member states of the EU and the AU are not the only parties with strong positions in the ongoing discussions at the WTO, it would seem likely that if the EU and AU are able to reach agreement on a package that will likely form the basis of a final resolution in Geneva.

With the WTO apparently discussing dates in June 2022 for rescheduling the 12th Ministerial Conference, the ability of the EU and AU countries to find a mutually agreeable solution to the intellectual property component of the pandemic response package could permit an agreed package to be accepted by WTO Members at the Ministerial Conference. The announcement last week of the Spring effort to reach agreement may also help facilitate movement on fisheries subsidies at the WTO — a negotiation that has been ongoing for more than 20 years.

In short, the EU-AU Summit while covering a lot of ground on issues of importance to both Unions may also have created a path to forward movement at the WTO on the response to the pandemic and more ahead of the 12th Ministerial Conference.

Actions by the US, EU, Quad (US, Japan, India, Australia), China and others should ensure that there are more than adequate vaccines available in 2022 to vaccinate all countries against COVID-19. Efforts by the WHO, GAVI, the U.S., EU and others are also likely to significantly increase the ability of countries in Africa to vaccinate their populations. Thus, the real benefit of resolving the WTO pandemic response at the 12th Ministerial will not be responding to COVID-19 but rather adopting rules and policies that will make the world more responsive to future pandemics.

We wish the EU and AU well in their upcoming negotiations.

Terence Stewart, former Managing Partner, Law Offices of Stewart and Stewart, and author of the blog, Current Thoughts on Trade.

To read the full commentary from Current Thoughts on Trade, please click here. 

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” BioNTech SE (Nasdaq: BNTX, “BioNTech”) has taken a next step to improve vaccine supply in Africa. The company has introduced its approach to establishing scalable vaccine production by developing and delivering turnkey mRNA manufacturing facilities based on a container solution. At a high-level meeting 2/16/22, 3:54 PM Building Vaccine Capacity in Africa – Exciting News from BioNTech | Current Thoughts on Trade https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2022/02/16/building-vaccine-capacity-in africa-exciting-news-from-biontech/ 2/8 at BioNTech’s new manufacturing facility in Marburg and at the invitation of kENUP Foundation, the company presented the container solution named ‘BioNTainer’ to key partners.

“Attendees included President Macky Sall of Senegal, President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization, John Nkengasong, Director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), and Svenja Schulze, the Federal Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany. Together with BioNTech’s Co-Founders Prof. Ugur Sahin, CEO, and Prof. Özlem Türeci, CMO, and COO Dr. Sierk Poetting, they jointly discussed the infrastructure, regulatory and technological requirements to establish an end-to end manufacturing network for mRNA-based vaccines in Africa.

“The manufacturing solution consists of one drug substance and one formulation module, each called a BioNTainer. Each module is built of six ISO sized containers (2.6m x 2.4m x 12m). This allows for mRNA vaccine production in bulk (mRNA manufacturing and formulation), while fill-and-finish will be taken over by local partners. Each BioNTainer is a clean room which BioNTech equips with state-of-the-art manufacturing solutions. Together, two modules require 800 sqm of space and offer an estimated initial capacity of for example up to 50 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine each year. The BioNTainer will be equipped to manufacture a range of mRNA-based vaccines targeted to the needs of the African Union member states, for example the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and BioNTech’s investigational malaria and tuberculosis vaccines, if they are successfully developed, approved or authorized by regulatory authorities.

“The capacity can be scaled up by adding further modules and sites to the manufacturing network on the African continent. One of the most critical parts of the manufacturing process is quality control, which includes all necessary tests for each finished vaccine batch. In partnership with local quality control testing labs, BioNTech will help to ensure the identity, composition, strength, purity, absence of product- and process-related impurities, as well as the absence of microbiological contamination of each produced batch.

“The establishment of the first mRNA manufacturing facility by BioNTech in the African Union is expected to start in mid-2022. The first BioNTainer is expected to arrive in Africa in the second half of 2022. Manufacturing in the first BioNTainer is planned to commence approximately 12 months after the delivery of the modules to its final location in Africa. BioNTech expects to ship BioNTainers to Rwanda, Senegal and potentially South Africa in close coordination with the respective country and the African Union. BioNTech will be responsible for the delivery and installation of the modules, while local organizations, authorities and governments will ensure the needed infrastructure. Partners in Ghana and South Africa could support the manufacturing with fill and-finish capacities. BioNTech will work closely 2/16/22, 3:54 PM Building Vaccine Capacity in Africa – Exciting News from BioNTech | Current Thoughts on Trade
https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2022/02/16/building-vaccine-capacity-in africa-exciting-news-from-biontech/ 3/8 with local authorities to ensure compliance to relevant regulatory procedures of the national regulatory agencies in each partner country, and also coordinate where appropriate with relevant continental and international agencies, including WHO, Africa CDC, the African Medicines Agency (AMA), and the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD).

“BioNTech will initially staff and operate the facilities to support the safe and rapid initiation of the production of mRNA-based vaccine doses under stringent good manufacturing processes (“GMP”) to prepare for the transfer of know-how to local partners to enable independent operation. Vaccines manufactured in these facilities are expected to be dedicated to domestic use and export to other member states of the African Union at a not-for-profit price.”

While the announcement by BioNTech will not address the short-term 2022 production and distribution needs of COVID-19 vaccines to low and lower-middle income countries (WHO is urging the world to obtain 70% vaccination rates in all countries by summer 2022), the announcement adds to the momentum of creating manufacturing of vaccines (for COVID-19 and other needs) in Africa. See Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Is there Any COVID-19 Vaccine Production in Africa?, September 13, 2021, https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/09/13/is-there-any-covid-19-vaccine production-in africapub85320#:~:text=Africa%20manufactures%20less%20than%20one, ave%20faced%20severe%20supply%2 0shortages (https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/09/13/is-there-any-covid-19-vaccine production-inafrica pub85320#:~:text=Africa%20manufactures%20less%20than%20one,have%2 faced%20severe%20supply%2 0shortages) (“Efforts are being made to ramp up production of COVID-19 vaccines on the African continent. As of September 2021, there are at least twelve COVID-19production facilities set up or in the
pipeline across six African countries (see figure). African COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing in the coming year could range from Pfizer-BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson vaccines to Russia’s Sputnik V and China’s Sinovac vaccines. In South Africa, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, along
with European partners, announced a 600 million euro ($710 million)financing package for Aspen Pharmacare. Aspen’s facility has already produced millions of doses and will ‘fill-and-finish’ (i.e. package imported vaccine substance) around 500 million Johnson & Johnson doses by the end of 2022. South Africa’s Biovac Institute has also agreed to accelerate fill-and-finish Pfizer vaccine manufacturing in Cape Town from 2022. In Senegal, the government—with Pfizer support from the United States and Europe—is building a $200million COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing facility with the Fondation Institut Pasteur de Dakar. This facility would represent the first on the continent to actually manufacture the substance of vaccines in parallel with fill-and-finish. Starting in November 2021, the Egyptian government will produce Chinese Sinovac at a new Vacsera facility outside Cairo, with a planned capacity of 2/16/22, 3:54 PM Building Vaccine Capacity in Africa – Exciting News from BioNTech | Current Thoughts on Trade https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2022/02/16/building-vaccine-capacity-in africa-exciting-news-from-biontech/ 4/8 1 billion vaccines annually. And with two agreements for drug substance manufacturing and fill-andfinish of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, Egypt may soon join Senegal in reducing Africa’s dependency on vaccine imports.”) The BioNTech press release contains eleven quotes from government and business officials, including EC President Ursula von der Leyen, the Presidents of Senegal, Rwanda, Ghana and the African Union, the WHO Director-General, the Chancellor of the Republic of Germany and others. 

2/16/22, 3:54 PM Building Vaccine Capacity in Africa – Exciting News from BioNTech | Current Thoughts on Trade https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2022/02/16/building-vaccine-capacity-in africa-exciting-news-from-biontech/ 5/8 The announcement by BioNTech is both exciting and important longer term for greater vaccine equity for various purposes. As noted in one of the many news articles on the announcement, Pfizer and BioNTech have also pledged to supply up to two billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to low-income countries during 2022. See Wall Street Journal, BioNTech Unveils Mobile Covid-29 Vaccine Factories for Developing World, February 16, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/biontech-unveils-mobile-covid-19-vaccine bodog casino factoriesfor-developing-world-11645007401 (https://www.wsj.com/articles/biontech-unveils-mobile-covid-19- vaccine-factories-for-developing-world-11645007401); see also Reuters, BioNTech to ship mRNA vaccine factory kits to Africa, February 16, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcarepharmaceuticals/biontech-ship-mrna-vaccine-factory-kits-africa-2022-02-16/ (https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/biontech-ship mrna-vaccine-factorykits-africa-2022-02-16/); Fortune, Pfizer partner BioNTech unveils container-based COVID vaccine factories that could start manufacturing doses in Africa this year, February 16, 2022,
https://fortune.com/2022/02/16/pfizer-biontech-covid-vaccine-biontainers inequality-africa-afrigenwho/ (https://fortune.com/2022/02/16/pfizer biontech-covid-vaccine-biontainers-inequality-africaafrigen-who/). It is those efforts at getting doses produced in the front half of 2022 to low income and lower-middle income countries that will be most important in meeting the immediate goal of dramatically increasing vaccine rates in Africa and in other countries with current low vaccination rates.

As reviewed in a number of earlier posts, the progress being made in vaccine equity to address COVID-19 in 2022 will not be dependent on the outcome of the ongoing WTO consideration of whether TRIPS obligations should be waived for COVID-19 vaccines. Rather progress is dependent on expanded production, moving product to needed countries, work in countries to ensure the ability to distribute vaccines received and expanded funding of COVAX. See, e.g., January 30, 2022: Recent National Public Radio story, “Africa may have reached the pandemic’s holy grail,” raises interesting questions on a country’s age distribution and ability to get past the pandemic stage with lower vaccination rates, 2/16/22, 3:54 PM Building Vaccine Capacity in Africa – Exciting News from BioNTech | Current Thoughts on Trade https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2022/02/16/building-vaccine-capacity-in-africa-exciting-news-from-biontech/ 6/8
https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2022/01/30/recent-national-public-radio-story-africa-may-havereached-the-pandemics-holy-grail-raises-interesting-questions-on-a-countrys-age-distribution-andability-to-get-past-the-pandemic-stage-wit/  (https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2022/01/30/recentnational-public-radio-story-africa-may-have-reached-the-pandemics-holy-grail-raises-interestingquestions-on-a-countrys-age-distribution-and-ability-to-get-past-the-pandemic-stage-wit/); January 23,
2022: COVID-19 Omicron variant – hopeful signs of peaking in the U.S. and Europe; supply disruptions continue from zero tolerance policy in China, https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2022/01/23/covid-19- omicron-variant-hopeful-signs-of-peaking-in-the-u-s-and-europe-supply-disruptions-continue fromzero-tolerance-policy-in-china/ (https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2022/01/23/covid-19-omicronvariant hopeful-signs-of-peaking-in-the-u-s-and-europe-supply-disruptions-continue from-zerotolerance-policy-in-china/); January 11, 2022: WTO efforts to address the COVID-19 pandemic — the January 10, 2022 General Council meeting and some current developments of interest, https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2022/01/11/wto-efforts-to-address-the covid-19-pandemic-thejanuary-10-2022-general-council-meeting-and-some current-developments-of-interest/ (https://currentthoughtsontrade.com/2022/01/11/wto-efforts-to-address-the covid-19-pandemic-thejanuary-10-2022-general-council-meeting-and-some current-developments-of-interest/).

Terence Stewart, former Managing Partner, Law Offices of Stewart and Stewart, and author of the blog, Current Thoughts on Trade.

To read the full commentary from Current Thoughts on Trade, please click here.

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However, the four key documents from FOCAC were not formally published until several days later, meaning few journalists could really understand the overall direction and intentionality of the conference immediately after it closed on November 30. This iteration of FOCAC adopted the largest number of – and longest – outcome documents in a single session (usually only two are adopted). A careful read of these documents indicates an Africa-China relationship that respective governments hope will not just intensify but will also become more Africa-led. Here’s why.

Our analysis suggests that if the outcomes promised at FOCAC 8 are met, the Africa-China relationship will become very significant in four specific areas.

First, while China is already the largest supplier of vaccine doses to African countries, having sent 200 million doses to date, now China could become Africa’s largest vaccine donor, with a commitment to donate $600 million doses and locally manufacture $400 million doses with partners on the continent. This will be a big step up in itself – so far only 1 million does have been completed by Egyptian manufacturer VACSERA under a joint production agreement.

Second, while China is the largest bilateral trade partner for Africa, with a combined trade value of $187 billion, the targets of China receiving $300 billion in African imports over 2022-2024 and $300 billion in annual trade by 2035 would make China Africa’s largest export destination – surpassing the EU as a whole, which been importing around $100 billion in African goods for years. From a Chinese perspective, if these trade targets are met, the African region will become as important for trade as the Latin American and Caribbean region is now.

Third, it could move China from fourth-place investor in the continent to a top position within the next 10 years, given the targets for $10 billion in new FDI by 2024 and $60 billion in additional FDI by 2035, which we believe to be conservative in any case. According to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, China’s FDI to Africa was $2.96 billion in 2020, a year of COVID-19 lockdowns.

Fourth, and last but not least, with the pledge to reallocate $10 billion of its Special Drawing Rights to African countries, China became the leading G-20 country in this area. Most others have pledged 20 percent or less, while some have also not specified a geographic region to receive SDRs.

What of headlines that China seems to be planning to cut loans to African countries by a third? Many pointed to that a proof that China’s banks must agree with many other analysts that African countries are in a general “debt crisis.”

Two key revelatory sentences in this year’s very long action plan are the recognition of the “persistent infrastructure gap” in Africa – a key challenge to the perennial “debt crisis narrative” – alongside the explicit promise that China will provide more concessional loans to African countries. Furthermore, as indicated above, there are other financial commitments outlined in the plan. So what to make of the absence of a monetary commitment when it comes to loans from China, or even aid from China?

One way to think about this, as evident from our comparison table below, is that in 2018, China effectively put both a target but also an upper limit on aid and loans to African countries at $15 billion – this is the part of the overall 2018 $60 billion commitment that is now “missing” in 2021. However, looking at other commitments in the speeches and action plan – whether on regional connectivity projects or vaccine donation, which would need to be financed by aid or loans – the total value of these could easily exceed $15 billion.

Hence, unlike other analysts, we do not expect aid or loans from China to decrease in the coming years. As such, we believe African stakeholders need to work closely together now to coordinate new, high-return proposals for borrowing at low interest from China to spur economic recovery from COVID-19.

Finally, in terms of intensification of the relationship, the plan indicates a much stronger emphasis than ever on digital cooperation, and the role of the private sector. The scope for digital cooperation envisioned is wide – ranging from satellite cooperation to education, smart cities, and e-commerce for trade, much of which will undoubtably involve Chinese private sector companies. When it comes to the private sector, the emphasis is on more environmental and social responsibility, plus reorienting investment sectors away from raw minerals into manufacturing and industrialization, along with a new push on reciprocal commitments to business-friendly environments – something just as important for African companies operating in China as it is for Chinese companies operating in Africa.

The overall direction of Africa-China relations, then, is intensification rather than a cooling. Not only that, but the plans unveiled at FOCAC 8 are more African-led – again, based on, a careful reading of all of the speeches and documents in comparison to previous declarations and action plans.

With Senegal’s co-chairing of this meeting, the collective African input into these documents is more recognizable than ever. There are references to all six of the 10-year frameworks of the African Union’s Agenda 2063 – the continent’s collective development plan – an increase since 2018, which only recognized two of the frameworks. The FOCAC 8 documents also make numerous references to many of Africa’s 15 flagship projects – from transport to energy and infrastructure planning, as well as the African Union’s gender and women’s empowerment strategy. While the African Development Bank (AfDB) and Africa Center for Disease Control (Africa CDC) were both referred to in 2018, they get several mentions in 2021 alongside newer African-led institutions such as the Africa Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT), the African Medicines Agency (AMA), and the African Medicines Regulation and Harmonization (AMRH) program. This might seem like bureaucratic speak, but it can make a huge difference to African countries. In 2020, the Alibaba foundation partnered with Africa CDC to deliver equal amounts of initial COVID-19 medical equipment to 53 African countries – providing an initial buffer for everyone, rather than cherry-picking favorites or strategic partners.

Furthermore, we are also aware – through our support to African stakeholders in preparing for FOCAC 2021 – that there were key asks relating to ensuring more and better delivered financing for African SMEs, and on mechanisms to increase the volume and value of exports from African countries to China. While not all of these were successfully negotiated – most notable was the absence of a commitment to a preferential trade agreement for all African countries under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) – there are positive signals including a working group with the AfCFTA secretariat, and perhaps more excitingly the promise to launch a process to recognize African geographical indications in China – something no other development partner has ever committed to, but which could have a huge impact on the trade value of agricultural and processed goods from textiles to wine.

One key phrase is missing from the package of documents: the phrase of a “just transition,” referring to the potential to use and finance certain types of non-renewable energy on the route to green development. That said, in the climate plan, China reiterates its commitment to stop coal financing and replace this with “clean” and “renewable” energy projects, an area that has received less finance from China in the past in comparison to transport projects. So this space is worth watching, even if the future trajectory is unclear.

There is no doubt that COVID-19 has made all cooperation difficult. Africa-China cooperation has certainly suffered, with drops in trade and investment in 2020 in particular. But a reading of the conference outcomes that suggest the relationship is decreasing in importance and ambition is misleading. The proposals signal an intensification. The biggest question is whether African governments and organizations – having now left a stronger impact on the outcomes than ever before under Senegal’s co-leadership – can keep up the momentum and really make sure the commitments do affect African businesses and citizens positively, and avoid negative impacts of intensification.

Leah Lynch is the deputy director of Development Reimagined. 

Hannah Ryder is the founder and CEO of Development Reimagined.

Jing Cai is a policy analyst at Development Reimagined.

To read the full commentary by The Diplomat, please click here.

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