Ethiopian Informer
ADDIS ABABA: Africa should promote supportive policies and infrastructure development to attract green investment and boost trade through the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), Acting Executive Secretary, Antonio Pedro, has urged.
“To reap the AfCFTA opportunities we must address Africa’s infrastructure gap,” a UNECA statement quoted Pedro as saying at the Africa Regional Session of the 12th Annual Investment Meeting, adding that, to attract sustainable cross-border investments to Africa, “hard and soft infrastructure must be addressed.”
The theme of the Africa Regional Session was “The AfCFTA Investment Protocol – An Investment Paradigm Shift for Africa” which set out to discuss the role of the AfCFTA and its Investment Protocol to create a new framework for attracting sustainable and productive investments to the continent and the investment opportunities that are arising as a result of that.
Pedro decried the lack of policy space to pursue the structural transformation agenda in Africa, stating, “it is not because of the lack of blueprints.” He called on African countries to support the implementation of the AfCFTA with “harmonized continental, regional and national trade and industrial policies that will help move from ideas into action”.
The AfCFTA entered into force in 2019 and constitutes a single continental market with a population of about 1.3 billion people and a combined GDP of approximately US$ 2.5 trillion. At its full realization, the AfCFTA with the mandate of eliminating trade barriers, will be the largest free trade area in the world bringing together the 54 countries.
The AfCFTA and the Program for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA) of the African Union will help deepen regional integration and build regional value chains he noted, highlighting the importance of building beyond Africa’s comparative advantage of resource endowment and low costs.
“We need to invest in science, technology and innovation (STI) to stay competitive in the long run and build Regional Value Chains (RVCs) that can generate more value added to increase the market share of African businesses,” he said, adding that Africa can leverage its natural resources to create sustainable regional value chains such as the battery and electric vehicles value chain in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Zambia.
“Green industries are important for Africa’s competitiveness in future net-zero carbon markets”, said Pedro. He underscored that an African Carbon Market presents a viable structural approach to attract sustainable investment opportunities that can drive the continent’s green growth ambition.
File Photo – UNECA
