The agreement has been signed Wednesday in Kigali during the 10th African Union Extraordinary Summit.
At the summit the Heads of State signed the legal instruments of the African Continental Free Trade Area, Kigali Protocol and Free Movement Protocol.
All the 44 countries signed the AfCFTA, among them 43 signed Kigali Declaration while 27 only signed Protocol on Free Movement of People.
The African Union Commission Chairperson, Moussa Faki Mahamat urged African countries to sign the protocols saying that there is no time for hesitation among member States.
“I therefore call on all Member States to sign and ratify the Free Trade Area Agreement without delay. Our ambition must be to ensure its implementation before the end of this year,” he said.
In his address while opening the summit, President Paul Kagame and the Chairperson of the African Union (AU) said that creating African market will benefit partners around the World and will better position the continent to leverage strengths and unity to secure rightful interests in the international arena.
“The advantages we gain by creating one African market will also benefit our trading partners around the world, and that is a good thing. At the same time, we will be in a better position to leverage our growing strength and unity to secure Africa’s rightful interests in the international arena,” Kagame told different Heads of States in the summit.
Kagame said that the promise of free trade and free movement is prosperity for all Africans as they are prioritising the production of value-added goods and services that are “Made in Africa”.
He noted that the act is not just a signing ceremony as deliberations are critically important along charting the next steps on continent’s journey towards the Africa we want.
Objectives of the CFTA
CFTA aims at creating a single continental market for goods and services, with free movement of business persons and investments, and thus pave the way for accelerating the establishment of the Continental Customs Union and the African customs union.
Also the market aims at expanding intra African trade through better harmonization and coordination of trade liberalization and facilitation regimes and instruments across RECs and across Africa in general.
The move is expected also to resolve the challenges of multiple and overlapping memberships and expedite the regional and continental integration processes.
According to the AU, the market also enhance competitiveness at the industry and enterprise level through exploiting opportunities for scale production, continental market access and better reallocation of resources.
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