This is the Kato Daily Podcast for Friday, April 12th, 2019. I'm Caleb Brown.

Twenty-two countries have now ratified the African Continental Free Trade Agreement bringing the trade deal into effect,

and yet Africa's biggest country by population and economy, Nigeria, isn't among them.

I spoke with Alex Hammond, a senior fellow at African Liberty, about what this

free trade deal might mean for the massive continent.

Gambia was the most recent country to sign on to the African continental free trade area that makes

22 countries and so this free trade agreement among African nations and a couple of others can now go into effect.

What does that mean?

Yeah, so that means that 90%, once it's implemented 90% of the tariffs on the goods traded between the members of states will be removed.

That's especially good for Africa because Africa has a very low amount of inter-regional trade

when you compare it to other continents. So in Europe and Asia for example

that interregional trade accounts for 69% of 59% of their GDP of their total exports, where is in Africa is just 18 percent.

The UN Economic Commission for Africa has predicted that just in the next few years,

once this trade agreement is implemented,

inter-original trade in Africa could increase by up to 52%,

and once the final 10% of tariffs are removed on quite sensitive goods,

this event double even further.

So, I mean you think about the United States, Canada and Mexico are our number one and number three trading

partners respectively and the United States of all the countries and the planet might be able

to boast, well we don't have to trade with anybody, we can produce all sorts of things.

But of course there are huge benefits to the United States to engage in lots of trade with

lots of different countries around the world.

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