A youth group, Nkrumahist Circle believes success of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) will remain a mirage unless the continent adopts a single currency which will make trading easier among member states.
In an interview with Noel Nutsugah on Zylofon Fm’s morning show THE STATECRAFT, Chairman of the Nrumahist Circle Amodani Gariba, expressed reservations about the operationalization of the AfCFTA, stating that, the homogenous approach used in the institutionalization of the AfCFTA is problematic because countries like Niger, Sudan, Somalia amongst other economically incapacitated countries cannot compete with economies like Nigeria, South Africa, Tunisia, Morocco, among others, and so it was important the leaders revisited the working policy to find solutions to the ‘flawed’ homogeneity used in the implementation of the single market Policy.
Mr. Gariba argued that diverging currencies in Africa also poses risk to the effectiveness of the program unlike the twenty seven countries under the European Union that have adapted the standardized Euros as their currencies.
“Africans per their countries use cedis, naira, South African rand, CFA, amongst others, which will make it difficult and expensive in operating in the free market under the AFCFTA“.
In Furtherance He stated, that multinational companies on the continent will benefit more to the detriment of indigenous companies.
“When you eliminate tariff rates and these multinationals get easy access into the markets of other African countries, the revenues of government will go down in the final analysis and the profit that is going to be accrued from the trade won’t go to the African economy, but then the profit will be repatriated to the home countries of these multinationals so we will end up losing”.
The chairman of the Nrumahist circle however proposed that African leaders should henceforth focus on constructing good transportation system to easily connect countries in the continent. Also, he admonished leaders to invest heavily on industrialization and desist from relying on just raw material which are underpriced on the international market. “Value should be added to your raw materials” he added.
For Mr. Gariba, AfCFTA can organically be traced to the pan Africanism agenda of Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah who professed on the eve of Ghana’s independence that “our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent“.
He said Nkrumah together with some African leaders looked forward to having a collaborative economic structure instead of a deliberately orchestrated competitive market like the AfCFTA.
Nonetheless, he called on government to as a matter of urgency relook at some labor laws, specifically, the minimum wage, to prevent exploitation of Ghanaian youthful population in the bid to advance the core tenets of the African Continental Free trade Area (AfCFTA), whiles calling on the youths on the Continent to be proactive and get adequately prepared to take up major roles in the labor force that will drive the AfCFTA.
