Africa-Press – Botswana. African Continental Free Trade Area AfCFTA Secretary General Wamkele Mene has reaffirmed the commitment of the secretariat he led to ensuring the space for Africa to express views and take ownership of its economy by the scruff of the neck.
He said during the closing ceremony of the inaugural AfCFTA Digital Trade and Services forum on Saturday that the AfCFTA Secretariat was resolute in ensuring that Africans achieve great strides in all economic segments.
However, Mr Mene reminded participants that the ambitious call to action at the forum needed concerted efforts from everyone to achieve the desired and concrete results within a short time.
“The call to action at this forum is ambitious, bold, forward-looking and shall require all of us to work together. It is not only the governments that will be able to achieve the transformation that we all want to see,” he said, imploring the private sector, youth, and civil society to come on board to tackle the challenges faced by Africans.
Mr Mene said words echoed by President Advocate Duma Boko and his Zambia counterpart Hakainde Hichilema, who called for the implementation of the decisions made during the forum, needed to be heeded if tangible results were to be achieved in the shortest possible time.
He said it was unacceptable that billions were spent by Africans trading outside the motherland when the same revenues could be spent in Africa, thereby boosting African economies and improving the lives of the people of Africa.
“We have to be very clear that we are not just implementing a protocol from a legal point of view but that we are undertaking far-reaching reforms that will ensure and buttress the economic sovereignty of our continent,” he said.
Zambia’s Minister of Science and Technology, Mr Felix Mutati, said articulating pathways would mean less dialogue and more action and output.
“We also need to have a tracking mechanism on the issues that we have agreed upon at this forum so that when we meet next year in Nigeria, we would know the achievement and gaps that exist,” he said, adding that only then shall digital trade be a veritable tool with which to transform the lives of ordinary Africans.
He said digital trade had tremendous potential across the African states, most of whom he said were substantially connected with fibre.
Minister of Commerce, Trade and Industry in Zambia, Mr Chipoka Mulenga, said the digital trade and services forum had explored ideas and perspectives fostering a collaborative environment that would bring about the change Africa needed to drive the digital trade agenda in Africa.
Minister Mulenga thus called on African nations to rise and to be protective and co-exist to drive the regional integration agenda.
He said there was a need to set up a transaction team at the AfCFTA Secretariat that would be in charge of business linkages to link supply and deficit areas within the continent, promoting trade among Africans and stopping capital flight.
The high-profile forum was held in Lusaka, Zambia, under the theme: Boosting Digital Trade to Accelerate AfCFTA Implementation, to drive economic growth through digital trade.
It drew African leaders and key stakeholders to chart the future of universal coverage and adequate connectivity.
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