A country business index has been developed for all participating African countries to maximise their benefits in the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement.
The index will assess the benefits that will be derived by participating countries of the AfCFTA Agreement.
Coordinator for the African Trade Policy Centre, Economic Commission for Africa, David Luke said the index will classify the performance of the countries on the implementation of the agreement.
“In a nutshell, we want to do what the World Bank does in doing business. But this will be oriented towards specifically the AfCFTA, how countries are implementing and what the bottlenecks and issues are for us to rank the countries in terms of their level of implementation and benefits. Since the time being we have 54 signatories, we will know who ranks first all the way to the bottom. We are doing for every country to understand what they need to do to benefit from this agreement”, he said.
Some benefits expected to be derived from implementing the AfCFTA include an increase in intra-African trade through better harmonization and coordination of trade within the African continent and addressing the challenge of small fragmented markets in Africa by creating a single continental market which will lead to economies of scale.
It will also add value to Africa’s abundant natural resources and promote economic diversification and industrialization and develop regional value chains and facilitate cross border investments in Africa.
The AfCFTA is also expected to attract Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) into Africa with strong regional and local content to help address foreign exchange constraints.