During the past two weeks, the ongoing wave of protests and strikes in Iran have gained a new intensity.
Free trade and Pan-Africanism
1 January 2019, byIn Kigali, Rwanda, on March 21, 2018, five years after the 50th anniversary of the creation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU)/African Union (AU) – considered in the Newspeak of the AU as “fifty years of success” – 44 of the AU’s 55 member states signed the Agreement concerning the Creation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), a “single continental market for goods and services, with free movement of business persons and investments”. Suppression of customs tariffs is supposed to boost intra-African trade, which represents around 12%-15% of Africa’s exchanges, well below the internal exchanges of other continents (which makes Africa the most open region to world trade). In the event of ratification, by 22 of the signatory states, by late 2018 - early 2019 – intra-African trade is slated to exceed 50% by 2022. [1]
Footnotes
[1] Six months later, only six states had ratified it: Eswatini (ex-Swaziland), Ghana, Kenya, Niger, Rwanda and Chad.