AfCFTA: Osinbajo Highlights Policy Actions To Drive Africa’s Industrialisation

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo says the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) offers limitless opportunities for the industrialisation of Africa.
Osinbajo said that authorities across the continent must take the right policy actions to actualise the prospects in AfCFTA such as the protection of local industries and improving value chains.
Osinbajo’s spokesman, Laolu Akande, in a statement yesterday in Abuja, said the vice president delivered a pre-recorded message at a Roundtable on Industrialisation in Africa.
The theme of the event organised by the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) to celebrate its Golden Jubilee, is “Positioning African Industries for Economic Transformation and Continental Free Trade.”
The vice president said that AfCFTA was indispensable if industrial development was to take off in Africa because it offered wider markets and economies of scale which were essential for manufacturing to be competitive.
“We must take policy actions to create an environment in which businesses can thrive.
“To start with, we must adopt the right type of macroeconomic and industrial policies.
‘It is important for African governments to provide a stable macroeconomic environment which avoids and smoothens out volatility in prices, sharp deteriorations in the current account and budget deficits and of course, rapid accumulation in debt burdens.”
Osinbajo said that on the industrial side, policies like tariffs, quotas, subsidies and non-tariff barriers which protected infant industries so that they could create jobs and enable learning were vital.
According to him, well negotiated rules of origin are important in the context of the free trade agreements as they are key to preventing trans-shipment and the deflection of trade.
He said that, without them, firms from non-state parties could set up simple labelling operations in one member state with a view to shipping already finished products to another member state without really adding any value.