Yesterday, business executives from all over the continent asked that the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) be implemented right away in order to have the necessary influence on regional trade.
The corporate executives talked during the Feed Africa Summit (Dakar 2), which is currently taking place at the Abdou Diouf Centre for International Conference in Dakar, the capital city of Senegal.
They claimed that in order for the continent to have enough food, intra-African supply chain operations needed to be opened up and liberalized.
At the CEO Roundtable, John Coumantaros, Chairman of Flour Mills of Nigeria Plc, Gora Seck, President of Ferme de la Teranga, and Ahmed Abdellatif, President of CTC Group, were among those who expressed this viewpoint.
Among the others are Kenya’s leading investment banker and politician, Polycarp Igathe, Rita Zniber of Diana Holdings, Gerald Mahinda of Dance Africa Corporation, and Birju Patel, vice chairman of ETG.
This stance comes as the summit hosted by the African Development Bank loses interest in food sovereignty for Africa (AfDB).
In order to make Africa the world’s food basket, the AfDB stated it is committed $10 billion to its feed Africa project over the next five years. Funding has been identified as a significant barrier that must be overcome in order to attain food sufficiency on a sustained basis.
In order to promote seamless trade between Africans, Igathe said the African trade pact “has to go from paper to reality” as soon as possible. He spoke passionately about the need to unleash Africa’s potential and eliminate the continent’s logistical constraints.
He cited infrastructure and logistics as some of the obstacles to intra-African commerce, stating that the region urgently needs regulations that promote open borders.
Igathe urged a review of the fiscal policies in place on all continents, arguing that the globe is driven by incentives rather than sanctions.
“We need to improve the investment climate, tackle rent-seeking and harmonise standards,” the ex-Kenya City deputy governor said. Mahinda, a South African, said AfCFTA should kick off immediately to strengthen African trade ties as he called on leaders across the board to stop highlighting the differences among different countries that make up the region but “emphasize the commonalities”.
In order to create alternate energy sources, the panelist also urged greater cooperation among participants in the commercial sector. In a similar vein, Coumantaros pointed out that making use of science and technology would assist in reducing the effects of a changing environment on food production, processing, and distribution.
The Flour Mills Chairman claims that in order to avoid a serious disaster, Africa must treble its food output over the next 25 years. To boost yields, he urged greater investment in agronomic services.
He promoted the local production of solar panels to lower the cost of access to alternative energy for nearby farms. This would provide farmers access to affordable alternative energy.
Jeanine Cooper, the minister of agriculture for Liberia, lamented that Africa had to wait for the Russia-Ukraine War to start looking inward during her intervention.
She expressed the prevailing viewpoint of the summit, contending that food sufficiency is insufficient as long as African countries lack control over the production, processing, and distribution of the food they consume.
