Africa’s long walk to unity (3)

NOW THAT AFRICAN UNION (AU) has clocked 60 years, it is simply fitting and proper to look at its achievements and some key performance indicators. Considering the most recent landmark achievements, would enable us to know whether the member countries have truly made progress or not. Few signs of progress are becoming obvious. The period between March 2018 when the landmark continental trade agreement was signed and January 2021 when the continental trading platform began trading could be regarded as a watershed period for Africa. At least, there has been a consciousness that the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement (AfCFTA) has indeed come into existence. What has not been spectacular or dramatic is the performance. Much work still has to be done to facilitate and encourage the convergence of African countries in matters of trade. Although a single market of over a billion consumers with a total GDP of over $3 trillion was about to unfold, the past two years have shown that many obstacles still need to be overcome. Trading involves and requires free movements of goods, services and of persons, but not much of those has happened since the past two years to commend the AfCFTA for any superlative performance in what is expected to be the largest free trade area in the world.

The underpinning integration and economic cooperation that are expected to facilitate much of these are yet to be in place in some critical areas. Transportation and logistics are at the very core of what should make progress happen. Considering the many challenges posed by geography and national politics, difficulties abound as inhibitors of land transportation. Apart from poor road networks, the challenges daily encountered at the borders with customs, immigration and many other informal border operators have largely limited the volume and amount of transborder commercial activities carried out between proximal countries. Apart from Ethiopia and Djibouti, there is hardly any modern or functional long distance cross-border railway system anywhere in Africa. Transportation of goods, services and humans face serious difficulties. The air transportation that comes readily as the easiest and fastest way to link two far-flung countries is bogged down with many hindrances. Nations still grapple with tardiness in the adoption of “Open Skies” policy while the aviation sector still has trouble with the implementation of the rules in the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM). Like in many treaties agreed to by African political leaders, progress in the implementation of the Yamoussoukro Declaration of 1988, significant for liberalising and unifying the African aviation industry, remains slow.

If the SAATM has been going through implementation by all African states since its adoption and establishment by the AU in 2015, or its implementation deadline of 2017, the multiplier effects ought to have been evident by now, after eight years. Meanwhile, despite the fact that trade is expected to be a key driver of economic growth in Africa, the intra-continental trade among African countries still remains dismally low at 14 percent as at the beginning of 2023. This is notwithstanding the fact that the AfCFTA market trading activities have entered its third year after last January’s second anniversary. Out of the 55 AU members, only 36 have adopted the SAATM agreements as of 2023. It is not surprising that the obstacles to free trade still remain very daunting and prominent as protectionist policies are still being used by African governments to shield their national carriers from competition. It remains rather very contradictory that African airlines still have to negotiate bilaterally for traffic rights to fly between African countries. Foreign airlines from outside Africa don’t encounter such barriers as they have greater ease of access to African countries than African airlines do in what can be described as double standard. Prohibitive taxes scare away African airlines, thereby slowing down the movement of goods and people, thus undermining the AfCFTA agreement. This is indirectly stalling Africa’s aviation ambitions by African governments.

Two weeks ago at the 11th African Airlines Association (AFRAA) convention in Addis Ababa, Mesfin Tassew, CEO of Ethiopian Airlines Group, reportedly said that “African states fear unfair competition from other African carriers. They believe their national carriers will be at a disadvantage if they open up.” This allegation was buttressed a week ago by Professor Obiora Okonkwo, Chairman of United Nigeria Airlines (UNA) and spokesman of the Airlines Operators of Nigeria, who specifically accused Ethiopia for refusing to grant a Nigerian private airline an access and traffic rights into Ethiopia even when Ethiopian Airlines has such an access into Nigeria and lands in three Nigerian airports weekly. During the AFRAA conference, Abderahmane Berthe, the Secretary General, was quoted as lamenting the association’s predicament, saying that “We cannot force member states to open up their spaces or implement SAATM.” The ease or difficulty in achieving the SAATM, one of Agenda 2063’s primary objectives, is a good indicator of the progress made by the AU at 60. The slow increase in the share of intra-African exports as a percentage of total African exports over three decades is indicative of slow progress towards regional economic cooperation within Africa. From about 10 percent in 1995 to around 17 percent in 2017, and down to 14 percent in 2023, the progress is one of fluctuation. And despite the commencement of AfCFTA, there is yet to be any remarkable growth. These are by far lower than what is recorded in Europe, Asia and North America at 69, 59 and 31 percent respectively.

African national leaders and politicians have not been incorporating regional and continental agreements into their national policies. And where they do, many of those policies are not implemented with regional integration or cooperation in mind. This is discernible from the limited emphasis on AfCFTA’s broader scope exceeding traditional free trade area, which generally focuses only on trade in goods. Meanwhile, services, investment, intellectual property rights, competition policy and e-commerce neither appear to receive appreciable attention yet, nor are other continental initiatives, such as the Protocol on Free Movement of Persons, Right to Residence and Right to Establishment. The implementation of the policy of visa on arrival is not yet widespread in Africa. The AU can learn a lot from the Schengen Area of the EU, a zone where 27 European countries abolished their internal borders, for the free and unrestricted movement of people, in harmony with common rules for controlling external borders and fighting criminality by strengthening the common judicial system and police cooperation. Except for Ireland and the countries that are soon to be part of the Schengen Area, it covers most of the EU countries, excluding Romania, Bulgaria, and Cyprus but including some although non-EU member countries such as Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Lichtenstein.

While the aviation sector that is amenable to less international travel restrictions remains shackled by inhibitory national policies, land transportation corridors in many parts of Africa continue to face more obstacles. In addition to poor road conditions, stiff border protocols that defy regional agreements on free movement of goods and persons as well as official corruption among customs and immigration officials, the escalation of border insecurity has raised the risk level. This is a major disincentive for intra-continental trade, especially in the Sahel region. Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad and Nigeria have been terribly affected by the marauding insurgents and terror gangs operating across national borders. The losses incurred by many countries as a result of these terrorist activities will be in the order of billions of dollars. The war of attrition and personal ego between two personalities in Sudan is costing the country so dearly in human and material terms. The consequences are the displacement of millions of Sudanese people seeking refuge in neighbouring countries of Ethiopia, Egypt, Chad and South Sudan. Apart from the displaced, those who have died are now in the hundreds. The AU clearly has a role to play in stabilising the troubled nation. No amount of money or concerted effort to curb the ever-widening spread of insecurity will be too much. Without security, economic activities will come to a standstill and the fortune of the continent will continue to nosedive.

The AU therefore needs to spread out in its outreach to every country of Africa – big or small. Without security, the AU Agenda 2063 will suffer serious setback and the path to the continental unity will be strewn with more dangers than good prospects.

• business a.m. commits to publishing a diversity of views, opinions and comments. It, therefore, welcomes your reaction to this and any of our articles via email: comment@businessamlive.com