Ghana and Nigeria have huge market presence in the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and with collaborations, the two countries can benefit immensely, said Chief Victor Okhai President for Directors Guilds of Nigeria.
Chief Okhai posited that the two West African neighbours have a combination of about 230 Million population which he classified as markets, saying if the leaders of these countries could remove the barriers of Customs and Immigration boundaries and unite, then they will stand a chance of fully benefiting hugely from the implementation of AfCFTA.
“I just want to say this especially in the spirit of AfCFTA, now or never before we need to come together as one, breaking all barriers of immigration and customs boundaries and taking advantage of the huge market we have”, he told Noel Nutsugah host of Statecraft on Zylofon FM on Friday October 9, 2021.
The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), with its Headquarters in Accra, is a free trade area created by the African Continental Free Trade Agreement among 54 of the 55 African Union nations
The general objectives of the agreement are to, create a single market, deepening the economic integration of the continent, establish a liberalised market through multiple rounds of negotiations, aid the movement of capital and people, facilitating investment, move towards the establishment of a future continental customs union, achieve sustainable and inclusive socioeconomic development, gender equality and structural transformations within member states, enhance competitiveness of member states within Africa and in the global market, among others.
It is for the above reasons that Mr. Okahai argued that “Nigeria is about 200 milliom market and Ghana is about 30.8 million, I want to say that Ghanaian products like Alomo and Adonko bitters are biggest in Nigeria, they are very popular. So we can take advantage to expand our markets”.
He insisted that the two countries stand to lose out in the many opportunities that come with AfCFTA, if what the leaders care about is shutting the borders because “we don’t want people to come in from outside”.
“If we close our borders we lose that opportunity, so there is no point for us feeling a bit uptight about saying these people are coming to us. If we collaborate, the two countries, that’s about 230 million market, that’s huge and let’s take advantage of it and we can only get bigger”
Chief Victor Okhai and other Nigerian movie industry greats are currently in Ghana to launch a Ghana-Nigeria collaboration which he is hoping will culminate into finding common grounds of promoting their works in order to break into the international markets.
It is for this reason that he believes with collaborations between the two countries, much can be achieved using the AfCFTA as a vehicle.
“That’s why we are launching this collaboration with Ghana movie industry so that we can have a point of collaboration and see how we can take this to the next level and indeed conquer the rest of the world”
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