Africa’s development and International trade sustainability (2)

Global trade in the post COVID era came with a lot of innovative procedures and transactional modifications that strategically toned down frequency in international travels and physical contacts for interactions between transnational business partners; this being one of the health safety measures after the global reset. In other words, the rate of mobility by persons in the course of discharging their respective daily duties and official assignments, became drastically reduced immediately after the COVID 19 pandemic. That observed mode effectively replaced frequency of physical contact with virtual operational methods as a substituted and well designed scientific mode. Many thanks to technological advancement for such innovative potentials and possibilities achieved through intelligent information technological capabilities. Electronic gadgets and other scientific tools now being utilised have drastically narrowed down very successfully the analogue system of running transnational business operations; where man can sit in his comfort zone and electronically transact multimillion dollar deals; and transmitted online real time. Physical meetings currently planned are successfully combined with virtual participation in hybridised forms, as alternative with Zoom Apps or webinar arrangement. The world as a global village that presently witnesses scientific hi-tech evolutionary trends is therefore known to contain every activity with recorded information in digitally compressed chips that are characterised in full precision for data management.

Africa’s development, therefore, ought to evolve innovative growth in all spheres that must be anchored on African cultural heritage, without external influence(s) or interferences. This is a strategic mode that needs to guide the continent to improve in her economic growth through transnational trade partnership in all economic sectors. The continental growth and development shall reflect social progress, and also impact directly on the quality of life of Africans. African culture generally aligns and favours an economic policy of self sufficiency from the background of subsistence agrarian lifestyle. This culture, the continent must adapt, and follow henceforth in her twenty first century international business dealings, with innovative economic reforms through value addition or recreation of every available natural resource material in the soil of the African continent. Rebasing Africa’s economic growth and development through world trade operations and activities, African cultural policy that is rooted on self-sufficiency from the background of subsistent agrarian lifestyle (as a template) should be innovatively updated and expanded to the level of international trading engagements. This valid logic is conceptually not different from the most recent proposition and contribution of the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) director general, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala at the 2025 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. 

She smartly postulated “re-globalisation” by building resilience in operational international business supply chains through decentralising manufacturing of products (globally) rather than lumping the finished goods sources from a particular localised point of origin. Such decentralisation with the attached and obvious diversification of allied products shall definitely create jobs. A place like Africa that is still tagged the “world’s raw material hub” should assume a changed socioeconomic status, if her abundant natural resources are efficiently managed by having global products manufacturers decentralise their operational activities, through investment in extending their production facilities to Africa, where value addition on such natural resources shall make more economic sense, in terms of a drastically reduced cost of production (based on availability of cheap labour, and cost of logistics on nearness to source of raw materials). Global investments should therefore think in this line towards the African continent. This strategy shall ultimately bring social succour and propel economic prosperity (in a sustainable manner) for the continent.

Strategically, industrialisation, energy, food security, human capital development, infrastructural development, regional integration; and the current global fight against the impact of global warming (climate change) and general trading activities globally are critical areas in socioeconomic activities that shall address the challenges the continent is facing as a non-performing economic system. If the above enumerated economic pillars are genuinely fixed in Africa, the world trade orders for a sustainable global action towards achieving uninterrupted and stable economic progress within African nations. The continental trade agreement, African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), is a project the continent needs to efficiently utilise in advancing the cause of economic growth amongst African countries. Regional economic blocs (European Union, EU, for instance) are globally acclaimed economic pressure groups that consistently protect member nations, and also conserve the wealth within the region from economic losses and subsequent financial failures. Such is expected of the regional trade bloc (AfCFTA), to sit up and focus real hard in building a formidable global trade value chain among member nations to promote African trade before the rest of the world. Ultimately, the economic growth factors favourably manifest prosperity in Africa’s development with the readily available contributory areas in the continent (cheap labour, right human capital, abundant raw material); once technological inputs are attracted and extended to satellite production plants in Africa from transnational branding partners who exist within reach of African manufacturers as international branding agents. This strategy should be innovatively pursued by African leaders to optimally exploit the abundant natural resources within the continent, for sustainable growth through global trade in the twenty-first century.

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