Nigeria opens export doors to region

Nigeria would begin selling some of its products to some of the regional markets with which it has had relatively loose economic ties. The West African country has officially green-lit the sale of locally produced goods to South Africa, Rwanda, Cameroon, and Kenya.

Exportation is scheduled to commence by April under an initiative from the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

A report seen in the Nigerian newspaper — The Punch shows that by April, Nigeria would begin exporting products to some African markets under the Guided Trade Initiative of the African Continental Free Trade Area. The information was disclosed by the National Centre of AfCFTA.

While trade with these countries prior to this initiative has been active, these trades have not been formal. The African Continental Free Trade Area is a free trade agreement created by 54 of the 55 African Union states, making it the world’s biggest free trade area by number of participant countries.

“We haven’t started trading in AfCFTA, we are duly going through the protocols. But recently the AfCFTA secretariat itself launched what they call the Guided Trade Initiative to get some countries to start trading outside their regional blocks,” the Executive Secretary of the National Action Committee on AfCFTA, Olusegun Awolowo, stated.

He said this while making an address on the sidelines of the Abuja Stakeholders Workshop on the AfCFTA Digital Trade Protocol, on Thursday.

“We’ve signed onto it and I think that by the end of April, we are taking a few companies, big, medium, and small enterprises to actually launch trading in Africa. All we are doing now is that we are going through and signing all the protocols, as well as finding a way how to implement them.

“So we are now at the stage of implementation. Therefore, trading hasn’t really commenced under AfCFTA. It is not an overnight thing, you have to go through all the protocols, sign them, and agree,” he added.

“We are going to South Africa, Kenya, Cameroon and Rwanda. — Business Insider Africa