By Giwa SHILE
Experts at the ongoing African Economic Conference (AEC) 2018, say Africa’s growing and vibrant private sector can be a major driver of regional integration across the continent.
According to a statement obtained from the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) on Wednesday, the experts spoke at the conference taking place in Kigali, Rwanda.
The conference which began on Monday, has as its theme: “Regional and Continental Integration for Africa’s Development.”
The experts also said that it would require more efforts by the public sector to improve the environment for doing business in Africa.
This, they said would include making additional investments in both soft and hard infrastructure to reduce the cost of doing business, Non-Tariff Barriers (NTBs) and harmonising policies and standards.
In addition, governments have to do more to facilitate building of viable value chains for agriculture, commodities and services, the statement said.
The Director, Centre for African Research on Enterprise and Economic Development, School of Business and Enterprise, University of West of Scotland, Prof. John Struthers, emphasised the need to develop regional value chains to facilitate greater integration into global value chains.
This, he said, was because most African countries were highly under-represented in Global Value Chains (GVCs), although their participation had significantly increased in the last decade.
He said that in spite of the existing challenges, progress was being made in Africa, citing the ongoing construction of 6,000km Trans-African highway project linking Kenya (Mombasa) and Nigeria (Lagos) by road and the recently launched Djibouti Highway to Ethiopia.
The Director, Regional Integration and Trade Division at the ECA, Mr Stephen Karingi, said there was the need to invest in information and technology to drive regional and continental integration.
He said that while Africa was already tapping into the possibilities created by digitasation and the mobile revolution, it was also the region that lagged behind the most in terms of the ability to engage in and benefit from e-commerce and the digital economy.
“Half of Africa’s population will not enjoy benefits of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) because they have no identification.
“We can harness the power of the private sector in the AfCFTA through digital identification.
“For instance, three quarters of the African population are yet to start using the Internet.
“In the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) B2C E-commerce Index 2017, the regional average index value for Africa was 28 compared to the world average of 54.”
The Chief Executive Officer, Rwanda Development Board, Ms Claire Akamanzi, said governments had to play a catalytic role to attract private investments.
She said that the government of Rwanda had made deliberate efforts to support the private sector by implementing several reforms aimed at not only easing doing business in the country, but also to make its economy competitive.
According to her, Rwanda is ranked the second easiest place to do business in sub- Saharan Africa after Mauritius, the first in the East African region and the 41st globally out of the 190 economies assessed in the 2018 World Bank Doing Business report.
Akamanzi also said that public private partnerships remained a priority in promoting a private sector led economy in order to achieve all the set targets that would maintain Rwanda’s competitive position globally.
The Director-General, the Gambia Standards Bureau, Mr Papa Secka, emphasised the need to step up investments in infrastructure to enhance the quality of products produced on the continent and harmonise standards to reduce non-tariff barriers to facilitate the private sector.
“There is a need to address non-tariff barriers to the extent that companies can be efficient and competitive.’’
According to him, countries have to build regulations based on standards, as the harmonisation of standards at continental level is crucial to facilitate regional trade.
The annual AEC is the continent’s leading forum fostering dialogue and knowledge exchange in the search for solutions to the development challenges of Africa.
It brings together leading academics, high ranking government representatives and development practitioners from across the globe.
The conference which would end on Wednesday, examines social, cultural and political frameworks for successful integration, as well as build on the landmark signing of the AfCFTA.
