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THE headquarters of the recently launched African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) will be situated in Accra, Ghana with the African Union Commission already seized with establishing its secretariat to enable it to commence its operations in earnest.

The most emblematic project of the African Union, the AfCFTA will open the largest free trade zone in the world since the creation of the World Trade Organisation in 1994, with a market of more than 1.2 billion people and collective Gross Domestic Product of over $3 trillion.

The Agreement establishing the AfCFTA entered into force on May 30 this year after 24 countries ratified it, with 22 ratifications required for it to start having legal effect. Eritrea is the only country that has not signed the AfCFTA Treaty out of the 55 African countries, with Nigeria signing at the 55th AU Heads of State and Government extra-ordinary summit in Niamey, Niger some two weeks ago.

Zimbabwe signed the Agreement in March last year in Kigali, Rwanda and its Parliament ratified it in March this year. The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) has estimated that intra-Africa trade would likely increase to 52.3 percent by 2020 due to the AfCFTA. Essentially, the AfCFTA aims to create a single continental market for goods and services, with free movement of business persons and investments, paving the way for accelerating the establishment of a continental Customs Union. It also aims to expand intra-Africa trade through better harmonisation and coordination of trade liberalisation, facilitation regimes and instruments across the continent, eliminate the challenges of multiple and overlapping memberships and expedite the regional and continental integration processes.

 The AfCFTA also aims to enhance competitiveness at the industry and enterprise level through exploiting opportunities for scale production, continental market access and better reallocation of resources in Africa. Through the AfCFTA therefore, countries are seeing a window to promote policies and resources that could create conditions for harnessing Africa demographic dividend in the context of creating space for jobs, especially for the youth and economic diversification.

Zimbabwe got a 15-year moratorium to implement the AfCFTA to enable it to re-tool its industries, which have been crippled by Western imposed sanctions for more than two decades. — New Ziana