David Cameron is calling for a 'free trade area' in Africa to increase GDP across the continent by an estimated $62 billion a year. He says that this can be achieved primarily by cutting red tape and reducing tariffs in African countries. I recently did a survey of community-based, income-generating projects in Malawi and discovered that these worthy activities were not benefiting the participants financially because the potential customers were too poor to buy their products.
Is there a danger that this could happen regionally?
Is there a danger that this could happen regionally?
South Africa is currently the only country in sub-Saharan Africa that has a well-developed industrial sector, while all her neighbours depend on agriculture, a sector which is severely under-developed. This is despite the fact that investment in agriculture underpins a developing economy by creating jobs and producing food and raw materials.
A report by the Global Harvest Initiative, entitled Enhancing Private Sector Involvement in Agriculture and Rural Infrastructure Development, estimates the overall agriculture investment gap in developing countries at nearly $90 billion annually.
African producers continue to be constrained by unfair import tariffs that protect producers in Europe and the USA.
Support for a free trade area in Africa should not be a substitute for reforming the Common Agricultural Policy or reviving the Doha Round talks to rebalance world trade in favour of developing countries.
