{"id":37802,"date":"2018-07-03T10:46:57","date_gmt":"2018-07-03T10:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/five-more-countries-sign-two-ratify-afcfta-at-au\/"},"modified":"2018-07-05T11:08:18","modified_gmt":"2018-07-05T11:08:18","slug":"five-more-countries-sign-two-ratify-afcfta-at-au","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/five-more-countries-sign-two-ratify-afcfta-at-au\/","title":{"rendered":"Five more countries sign, two ratify AfCFTA at AU Summit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The signing exercise took place on the sidelines of the 31st African Union Heads of States and Government summit in Nouakchott, Mauritania that took place July 1st to July 2nd.<\/p>\n<p>At the summit, two countries, Chad and eSwatini (former Swaziland) deposited their instrument of ratification while Guinea announced they will deposit their instrument of ratification next week.<\/p>\n<p>President Paul Kagame and the Chairperson of African Union (AU) congratulated the five new signatories which are Burundi, Lesotho, Namibia, Sierra Leone and South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCongratulations to the new signatories of AfCFTA,\u201d Kagame said.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile 49 member states have signed the AfCFTA and six have ratified it. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is significant progress and more is underway. It therefore signifies great progress towards the Africa we want and building it in the manner we have chosen,\u201d Kagame added.<\/p>\n<p>He said that the summit had been very productive and tackled the issues of highest priority for the continent.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Africa we want is being built before our eyes piece by piece. Let\u2019s keep it up and do even more and better going forward,\u201d Kagame noted.<\/p>\n<p>The AfCFTA agreement is expected to boost intra Africa trade by 53% through  eliminating import duties and non-tariff barriers. The agreement is potentially poised to create an African market of more than 1.2 billion people with an economy worth $2.5 trillion. <\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-26002 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/28290007087_f324795208_b-f93dd.jpg\" alt=\"Kagame congratulated new signatories of the AfCFTA\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Five countries have signed African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), bringing the number of signed states to forty-nine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[72],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-37802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-featured-news-home","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37802\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37802"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=37802"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=37802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}