Africa's Free Trade Zone

The Southern African Development Community (SADC), the East African Community (EAC) and the the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) have united to create an even larger Free Trade Zone across Africa!

Read more about the zone here. The photo map is from the same BBC article.

-- updated: 11.44pm --

I had a conversation about the zone with two friends, and we decided there were two things at play here: (1) Foreign business, ie: business done with territories outside Africa, is likely to decline because of cheaper inter-African trade; (2) At the same time, African countries become less dependent on financial support from foreign governments and institutions.

What is needed is a balance between successfully reducing inter-African trade restrictions and a healthy injection of investment capital from abroad.

Let's see how this plays out. I'm hoping Tanzania keeps it up when working with the EAC.

Comments

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