Is pan-African trade a pipe dream?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 28 March 2019
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Can the continent remove trade barriers and create a billion-person internal market? That's the hope of the African Continental Free Trade Area, but a year on from its initial signing, many obstacles remain.
Nearly all of Africa's 55 nations have signed up to the initiative, yet the most populous country Nigeria remains a hold-out. And there still remain huge logistical barriers to free trade, as Will Bain discovers when he speaks to frustrated truckers on the Zambia-Botswana border.
Ed Butler speaks to Ghana's minister for trade Alan Kyerematen, as well as Pearl Uzokwe of the African conglomerate Sahara Group, and Alex Vines of London-based think tank Chatham House.
(Picture: Trucks drive along the Ethiopian side of the Ethiopia-Eritrea border; Credit: Michael Tewelde/AFP/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, Patrick I.e. here. I've made a brand new podcast called 30 Animals That Made a Smarter. It's about how |
| 0:06.3 | animals have inspired innovations in science and technology, and the animals will be really upset if you |
| 0:12.2 | don't check it out. But back to the podcast you've chosen to listen to now. |
| 0:17.6 | Hello, I'm Ed Butler and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:22.1 | Today, what it's like for truck drivers stuck at one of Africa's nightmare border crossings. |
| 0:28.2 | I came here around 14 to 15 hours. |
| 0:31.6 | Yeah, I sleep here. |
| 0:32.9 | That sounds very frustrating. |
| 0:34.9 | Yeah. |
| 0:36.1 | Sounds horrible, doesn't it? |
| 0:37.2 | But today we hear how Africa could be on the brink of a continent-wide free trade agreement. |
| 0:42.6 | Is this the dream that some speak of? |
| 0:45.1 | There are massive obstacles here in the way for a pan-African free trade. |
| 0:48.6 | The headlines, I think, were to succeed as impressive, creating 20 to 30 million new jobs, |
| 0:53.5 | his claim. |
| 0:56.0 | But there are real concerns. |
| 1:00.8 | Cutting Africa's trade barriers and what it will mean. Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 1:08.4 | Now, it's been a talking point for decades. How do you get Africa trading with itself? How do you harness all that pent-up economic potential and support it |
| 1:11.7 | for the good of a billion-plus people? It is a hot issue. Intra-African trade is currently just |
| 1:17.9 | a paltry 14% of everything the continent exports. Most of it these days is sold as raw materials, |
| 1:25.1 | oil, minerals and agricultural goods cheaply to rich countries around the world, |
| 1:29.6 | where all the goods get refined and sold on, and there the big profits are made. |
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