Speaker: Prof. Stefano Inama – United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

Academic Coordinator: Carlos Closa Montero (EUI)

The African continent is enjoying one of the fastest economic growths in recent decades mainly thanks to its exports of raw materials and commodities. However the advancement in the participation of African countries to the global economy needs to be anchored to a sustainable economic and institutional framework allowing the spillover of such economic effects to SMEs and the African population. As international trade, especially intra Africa regional trade, could be a vehicle for a more homogenous growth , the regional trade initiatives called the Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) has recently been created to relaunch regional integration in Africa given the limited achievements of existing Regional Economic Communities (RECs) in liberalizing trade. Albeit substantive early efforts have been made to achieve an FTA that effectively liberalize intra African trade the results of the TFTA negotiations officially launched at the Tripartite Summit in June 2015 are meager including a built in agenda to try cover the gaps that are left open due to lack of consensus.Despite the strongest high-level political will and support demonstrated by the Heads of State and Government at their First Summit which directed that a FTA encompassing the 26 countries making up the Tripartite be expeditiously established, the response at the level of technocrats in Member States has generally appeared less than expeditious. This paper analysed the results of the negotiations to assess the value of the current TFTA in terms of trade liberalization including recommendations and suggestions for a possible way forward.