The national centre of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) revealed on Thursday that Nigeria will initiate the formal export of locally produced commodities to South Africa, Rwanda, Cameroon, and Kenya starting next month.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Abuja Stakeholders Workshop on the AfCFTA Digital Trade Protocol, on Thursday, the Executive Secretary, National Action Committee on AfCFTA, Olusegun Awolowo, told journalists that though trading under the main AfCFTA had yet to start, the secretariat of the programme had introduced the Guided Trade Initiative.
He said, “We haven’t started trading in AfCFTA, we are duly going through the protocols. But recently the AfCFTA secretariat itself launched what they call the Guided Trade Initiative to get some countries to start trading outside their regional blocks.
“We’ve signed onto it and I think that by the end of April we are taking a few companies, big, medium and small enterprises to actually launch trading in Africa. All we are doing now is that we are going through and signing all the protocols, as well as finding a way on how to implement them.
“So we are now at the stage of implementation. Therefore, trading hasn’t really commenced under AfCFTA. It is not an overnight thing, you have to go through all the protocols, sign them and agree.
“However, we are hoping that we are able to start trading under the GTI, not on the main AfCFTA itself, by the end of April. So it will be on record that Nigeria has now started exporting officially and formally, because, of course, informal trade is going on anyway.”
The African Continental Free Trade Area is a free trade agreement established among 54 of the 55 African Union nations, creating the largest free trade area in the world by the number of participating countries.
