Kenyan stakeholders on 5 March ended a national review meeting of its African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) implementation strategy in Naivasha after incorporating new components with wide ramifications for the economy.
They incorporated topics such as e-commerce, climate change and COVID-19, which had from last year disrupted production and trade flows across the world, to enable the East African country derive maximum benefits from the agreement.
The stakeholders, including public and private sector operators, civil society organizations, human rights bodies and the academia, with the technical support of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), acted to identify their priority sectors, markets and key interventions to make the document better.
“We still see some outstanding challenges or impacts of COVID-19 such as a significant decline in informal cross border trade, increased transit times along northern and central corridors, and a heightened dependence on commodity exports” said Judith Ameso, a trade expert with the African Trade Policy Centre (ATPC), a unit of the ECA.
