Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), April 14, 2021 – The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), in collaboration with the Government of Burkina Faso, is organising a workshop in Ouagadougou, from March 15 to 16, to validate the National Strategy for the Implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) for the country.
This meeting, which will be held in a context where African countries launched the first operational phase of the AfCFTA in July 2019, aims to serve as a presentation framework for discussion and validation of the National Strategy for the Implementation of this Agreement in Burkina Faso.
For the Director of the ECA Sub-Regional Office for West Africa, Ngone Diop, “With an integrated market of 1.2 billion people and a combined Gross Domestic Product estimated at 2.5 billion dollars, the AfCFTA offers African countries an unprecedented opportunity for their economic take-off and to accelerate their structural transformation”.
“The geopolitics of the economic and health response to the Covid 19 pandemic reminds us of the imperative of the industrialisation of Africa, which is one of the main aims of the AfCFTA. The development of the continent will be achieved through the AfCFTA”, added Ngone Diop.
The workshop will:
- present the main results of the diagnostic analysis and the strategic framework;
- present the draft priority action program associated with the strategic framework;
- produce a summary of the main comments and recommendations of the workshop to be validated by the participants;
- validate the draft strategy document subject to taking into account the comments and recommendations of the workshop;
- discuss and define a roadmap on the main steps to come with the Members of the AfCFTA Negotiating Committee.
The main purpose of this strategy, the development of which is based on a process that is both participatory and inclusive, which has enabled the collection of both quantitative and qualitative data, is to define an application plan for the measures contained in the Agreement establishing the AfCFTA and which aim at the liberalisation of the national market that must then fit harmoniously into an integration framework on a continental scale.
This validation workshop, which will last two days, will see the participation of member structures of the AfCFTA Negotiating Committee, the public structures directly concerned, professional and umbrella organisations, Parliament, the press, technical and financial partners, individual stakeholders in the sector, the private sector and experts from the ECA and the AUC.
This national workshop to validate the provisional document of the National Strategy of the AfCFTA in Burkina Faso is one of the key actions of the project funded by the European Union: "Deepening Africa's trade integration through effective implementation of the AfCFTA to support economic integration" with a total budget of 8 million euros. Since 2019, the ECA has led the implementation of the first phase of this project funded by the European Union for one year and continues to implement, with its partners, the second phase, which started in January 2020 and will end. in December 2022.
For more information, please contact: Tahirou Gouro, Communications Officer, ECA-SRO/WA,
Email: gouro2@un.org
Sub-Regional Office for West Africa
428 Avenue du Fleuve Niger
B.P. 744
Niamey, Niger