Diplomatic expert expresses doubt about viability of AfCFTA

Farouk Al Wahab, an International Diplomatic Consultant believes the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) will just remain a theory regardless of Ghana handing over a building in its capital Accra to the African Union (AU) to serve as the secretariat of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

According to him, countries on the African continent pretend to be united when in reality they hate each other.

Speaking in an interview on Happy 98.9 FM’s Epa Hoa Daben political talk show, Farouk indicated that, “Countries in Africa especially West Africa always build the structures, nice buildings and put together documents all the time but refuse to sign these documents to make them binding.”

He noted that there are a countless number of bottle necks which are preventing Africa from uniting which the African Union (AU) itself is no exception of. “The AU has also prevented signing and allowing Morocco to join the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and that is the problem. We have a lot of bottle necks and that is the sad reality of Africa.

Citing some instances of friction between African countries, the career diplomat revealed that until recently, Ghana had a really bad relationship with Cameroun which took football to repair the crack.

“There are diplomatic hitches between the West African countries. In the past, any Ghanaian who visited Cameroun was beaten to a pulp. But it took football to unite us.

Abedi Pele united and repaired the relationship between Ghana and Cameroun. Abedi Pele visited Cameroun very often because he had friends there whom he played football with at the time. It was even reported in a Cameroonian newspaper that he was from Cameroun.”

He further revealed that Ghana presently does not even have good diplomatic relations with Mauritania, the source country for the name ‘Ghana’.

Farouk Al Wahab reiterated, “We’ve seen them sign the African trade agreement but let us see them walk the talk.”

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is a free trade area which was created by the African Continental Free Trade Agreement among 54 of the 55 African Union nations.

The free-trade area is the largest in the world in terms of the number of participating countries since the formation of the World Trade Organization.

The agreement was brokered by the African Union (AU) and was signed on by 44 of its 55 member states in Kigali, Rwanda on March 21, 2018. The agreement initially requires members to remove tariffs from 90% of goods, allowing free access to commodities, goods, and services across the continent.