Skip to footer

Africa’s second liberation

When most of the continent’s nations sign up to create a free-trade zone, it signals more than a business transaction. Africa is sharing values of trust and equality.

|
AP Photo
President Cyril Ramaphosa, right, of South Africa and the Minister of International Affairs, Lindiwe Sisulu, during the signing of the Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) Agreement during an African Union meeting in Kigali, Rwanda March 21. The pact is being called the largest free trade agreement since the creation of the World Trade Organization.
  • By The Monitor's Editorial Board

A longtime dream in Africa has been the creation of a free-trade zone from Cairo to Cape Town. Last week the dream found some reality. Most of the continent’s 55 countries signed two pacts to reduce tariffs and allow the free movement of people. The agreements not only blow against current global winds of protectionism. If fully implemented, they could create the world’s largest free market – and liberate Africa from many historic dependencies.

The continent’s 1.2 billion people have much in common, including past colonization and a high reliance on foreign aid. Trade, however, is not widely shared. Only 16 percent of Africa’s exports and imports are with itself. That compares with 70 percent for Europe. If Africa is ever to end its dependence on commodity exports to wealthy nations and unlock its potential to become a manufacturing powerhouse, it must integrate its economies.

The two pacts are a milestone not only in the potential to boost trade (which is estimated to grow $35 billion by 2020). They are also a step in establishing trust and equality between Africans. When groups of nations open their borders to goods and services, they erode notions of business as a zero-sum transaction. They see the long-term benefits of expanded markets rather than simply the short-term losses and costs of adjustment. A greater flow of goods is seen as a greater good.

Still, the fear of more intra-Africa trade led 11 countries to put off signing the main pact, the Continental Free Trade Agreement. Two of them, Nigeria and South Africa, worry about competition to their industries or the possibility that some countries will slap “Made in Africa” labels on imports from elsewhere.

Such concerns can be fairly resolved as negotiations continue to put the agreements into practice. The momentum to see Africa as one market is too strong. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa even suggests creating a single currency as within the European Union.

The continent has a larger middle class than the American population. Its people are digitally connected, especially in financial transactions. And while it still struggles to plant democracies, a continent with a median age of 27 faces strong demands to create greater opportunities. The new pacts could be Africa’s second historic moment of emancipation.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Africa’s second liberation
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2018/0329/Africa-s-second-liberation
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe