The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
What about e-commerce and intellectual property rights? How are negotiations going?
We have started the preliminary process, the technical working groups are convening, the meetings, and negotiating sessions. Phase Two negotiations comprise competition policy, investment protection and intellectual property rights. Of course, COVID-19 has been a barrier. We are meeting virtually, where possible, but we have a clear directive to conclude the negotiations on Phase Two, including the rules that are required for intellectual property rights, by the end of 2022. This is very important as we’ve seen with the pandemic in digital trade—we’ve seen the importance of e-commerce and of having rules that govern trading on digital platforms.
How much impact has the pandemic had on your operations as a Secretariat and the implementation of the AfCFTA in a broader sense?
The pandemic has had a very severe impact on the operations of the Secretariat. I was elected at the start of the pandemic, and I spent the first seven-and-a-half months of my tenure in a lockdown situation. We were not able to do much. Some 42 countries in Africa were in a full or partial lockdown. But we kept pushing, and we are making progress.
There are two lessons that we should draw: the first lesson is, the pandemic has underscored the importance of Africa accelerating industrial development, self-sufficiency and the establishment of regional value chains across the continent. We are not saying that we need to disconnect from global value chains, but we need to accelerate our self-sufficiency so when there are these border restrictions, when there are export restrictions on germ-killing products, on masks, on personal protection equipment required to fight a pandemic, that we are self-sufficient.
The second lesson would be to make sure that the rules on intellectual property rights serve Africa’s industrial development and Africa’s public health imperatives; that the legal framework of the AfCFTA, of the intellectual property rights, supports the capacity to produce vaccines without patent violations and enables Africa to establish its generic drug industry without the constraints presented by intellectual property rights.
What is the status of the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), a platform that should facilitate free trading?
We will launch the PAPSS on the 13th of January 2022 in Accra, Ghana. We have been working with Afreximbank to establish the PAPSS, and we started with a pilot in six countries in West Africa. Afreximbank is providing liquidity for the settlements and the technology. We’re providing the legal framework for the platform that will be legally tied and anchored in the AfCFTA.
We are very excited about the potential that this payment system has. We have over 42 currencies in Africa. The cost of currency convertibility annually is estimated to be about $5 billion. We want to reduce and eventually eliminate that cost because it constrains our SMEs’ competitiveness and makes trade costly and inaccessible to many SMEs and young entrepreneurs.
Do you mean from January 2022 traders will be able to use that platform?
That is correct. At Afreximbank and the AfCFTA Secretariat, we want to make sure that from January 2022, African countries that intend to switch to the platform can do so. We want to start in earnest trading in local currencies.
Recently, the AfCFTA Secretariat and UNDP released The Futures Report 2021, which identifies value chains that African entrepreneurs can take advantage of. Is it not too early to canvass these value chains, given that free trading is not necessarily in full swing?
I don’t think it’s too early to start looking at those value chains, because if you are a trader or an exporter, or an economic operator, it can take a year or two to establish supply chains into new markets.
As you know, we hosted, along with the Afreximbank, the Intra-African Trade Fair in Durban [South Africa] in November 2021 and one of the objectives of the trade fair was to facilitate the process of traders in Africa establishing supply chain networks and business connectivity so that with a tariff book in front of them for a particular market, they would already have the right networks to start trading.
So, we are very excited about the collaboration with the UNDP. We identified about 10 value chains in the report for our young entrepreneurs and SMEs run by women. The success stories from the surveys carried out leading to the launch of the report are very encouraging.
The next step is to match the young entrepreneurs, the SMEs, with investment opportunities in new markets. Early in 2022, we will host a summit where we will be doing that. We will identify certain value chains and say, here’s an SME run by a young woman or a young entrepreneur, we want investors to help, to invest in the value chain, and to create export opportunities.
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Source: African Renewal
Wamkele Mene, Secretary-General AfCFTA Secretariat.
