The Ghanaian government on Thursday called for the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) through shared production lines to achieve sustainable intra-continental trade and ensure that its benefits reach citizens across the continent.
Speaking at the fifth joint meeting of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Ministers of Trade and Industry in Accra, the Ghanaian capital, Ghana’s Trade, Agribusiness, and Industry Minister Elizabeth Ofosu-Adjare said that the export baskets dominated by raw commodities destined for markets outside the continent would not bring the transformation envisaged under AfCFTA.
Within the ECOWAS subregion, Ofosu-Adjare said that intra-regional trade in formal terms still hovers at roughly one-tenth of its total trade because “we produce little that our neighbors buy and we buy little that our neighbors produce.”
The clearest path to making the AfCFTA real, she said, is “for us to work together to develop regional value chains, particularly in textiles, apparel, and the automotive sector, where our complementarities are strongest.”
“Our positions must incentivize manufacturing on this continent, deepen the use of regional inputs, and make it genuinely worthwhile to produce together rather than to import from outside,” Ofosu-Adjare said.
The minister pledged Ghana’s readiness to co-invest, co-produce, and co-open markets for regionally made goods, urging all ECOWAS member states to adopt the same spirit of partnership and urgency.
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Kalilou Sylla, commissioner for Economic Affairs and Agriculture of the ECOWAS Commission, said that the member states have created a solid base for cooperation through trade agreements, a common tariff, free movement rules, and the West African Common Industrial Policy.
“The true measure of integration is how effectively we convert these commitments into tangible benefits for citizens, businesses, women traders, and young entrepreneurs across our region,” Sylla added.
