A Message from Abrabrand
Africa is the mirror for the African Diaspora
Given my thesis about globalization and extensive professional as well as personal experience, I launched 11 years ago my cross-cultural branding company understanding that culture was vital for our growing inequalities and misconceptions. As stated by Geert Hofstede, culture is defined as the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from others
. In an increasingly multicultural world, cross-cultural branding is pivotal for business impact, corporation’s growth, and good governance as well as nation building.
In the words of the greats
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.
~ Martin Luther King Jr.
As
An awareness of our past is essential to the establishment of our personality and our identity as Africans.
~ Emperor Haile Selassie
Knowing
Those who would judge us merely by the heights we have achieved would do well to remember the depths from which we started.
~ Kwame Nkrumah
Since
It is with your aid, as the people, that I think we shall be able to preserve - not the country, for the country will preserve itself, but the institutions of the country - those institutions which have made us free, intelligent and happy - the most free, the most intelligent, and the happiest people on the globe.
~ Abraham Lincoln
Let's continue building together.
Rahel G
Managing Director
Afrolehar
Benefits of AfCFTA
Under AfCFTA, the 5 agreed priority services are Transport, communications, tourism, and financial and business services.
Much anticipated trade agreement as it allows a single African air transport market (SAATM) and the free movement of people are Agenda 2063 flagships. The AfCFTA Agreement is a framework agreement covering Trade in Goods and Services, Investment, Intellectual Property Rights and Competition Policy.
AfCFTA will be the world’s largest free trade area since the formation of the World Trade Organization. AfCFTA is pivotal for Africa countries as many of these fragments are too small to support the economies of scale and investments necessary for industrial growth: 21 have a GDP less than $10 billion. Businesses face average tariffs of 6.9 per cent when they trade across Africa’s 107 unique land borders, but also substantial non-tariff barriers, regulatory differences, and divergent sanitary, phytosanitary and technical standards that raise costs by an estimated 14.3 per cent. The AfCFTA seeks to integrate and consolidate Africa into a $2.5 trillion market which boasts over 400 African companies that earn annual revenues of US$1 billion or more.
What’s in it for Foreign Investors?
African Continental Updated Free Trade Questions Area & Answers
Africa’s experience is of under-investment: despite being home to 17 per cent of the world’s population, Africa accounts for just 2.8 per cent of world investment stock.4 Africa is ripe for international and intra-African investment. (...) To qualify for the preferences and benefits under the AfCFTA, international investors must ensure that their production involves sufficient transformation or value-addition in an AfCFTA state Party so as to be considered as ‘originating’ from those AfCFTA countries. The level of value-addition or transformation varies by product as deter- mined by the AfCFTA Rules of Origin. As of September 2019, 90 per cent of the work on Rules of Origin was complete, with the Niamey African Union Summit directing negotiators to submit final schedules of outstanding Rules of Origin to the February 2020 session of the Assembly of the African Union
For more information see the FAQ for AfCFTA..
AfCFTA and the Upcoming Protocol on Investment: What Can Investors Expect?
As the negotiation of the Investment Protocol is based on consensus, it is likely that the Investment Protocol will also adopt this approach and leave the Member States to opt-in or opt-out of any investor-state dispute settlement mechanism. Yet, such access to an investor-state dispute settlement mechanism could be conditional under the Investment Protocol. Some African states already limit the access of foreign investors to arbitration by imposing additional requirements, such as the consent in writing to arbitration of the host state or the prior exhaustion of local remedies. Read more.
Infrastructure development
Building to Connect
Projects to Facilitate Trade
Easing Transportation
NEPAD Projects
Interesting Articles
Solving Africa’s infrastructure paradox
McKinsey analysis indicates that Africa’s current pipeline of infrastructure projects includes $2.5 trillion worth of projects estimated to be completed by 2025, across all asset classes. Read more
Coronavirus: Africa needs AfCFTA to transform its economies
In Francophone West Africa, harmonization of currency and regulation has demonstrated what regional co-operation can achieve. Trade hubs like Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal have already emerged (measured as a share of total regional imports). It is however on the Anglophone side that resides the largest trading hub. South Africa alone is the source of about 35 percent of all intraregional imports in Africa (and about 40 percent of intraregional manufacturing imports). Read more
AfCFTA will push on even if virus second-wave hits, says Wamkele Mene
Africa lags behind other regions in terms of internal trade, with intracontinental commerce accounting for only 15% of the total, compared with 58% in Asia and more than 70% in Europe. The agreement is meant to help change that, aiming to lower or eliminate cross-border tariffs on 90% of goods, facilitate the movement of capital and people, promote investment and pave the way for the establishment of a continent-wide customs union. Read more
Africa hamstrung by trade restrictions over goods for fight against Covid-19
The regional exports of these products are not enough to meet the needs of African frontline healthcare workers, but the inputs or materials needed to manufacture these medical goods are present on the continent to develop supply chains. Medical or surgical gloves mostly use latex and many countries on the African continent have a considerable supply of rubber they sell abroad, but few finished gloves are exported. “Cote d’Ivoire and Cameroon already export surgical gloves, but African demand exceeds supply. By using 6 percent of their monthly latex exports, the two countries could produce the 13 million gloves that African health responders need each month to face Covid-19,” the report outlined. Liberia, Ghana and Nigeria also export latex, but do not export any surgical gloves, according to ITC data. Read more
Chipper Cash Closes $13.8 Million Series A Round And Plans New Hires
Chipper Cash, which was founded two years ago by Ugandand Ham Serunjogi and Ghanaian Maijid Moujaled has so far raised $22 million in total and is currently in seven countries in Africa including Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Africa, and Kenya. Read more
Morocco to foster African leadership in post-coronavirus
For now, electrical cars make up 5% of overall Moroccan automotive industry fabric. (…) Morocco’s solidarity initiatives towards Sub-Saharan Africa after King Mohammed VI ordered the shipment of vital medical aid including 8 million masks, face shields, protective clothing, anti-covid medicine and sanitizers to more than 15 countries. (…) Morocco was the only African country to have airlifted aid to other countries within the continent, it said. Morocco’s intra-African solidarity move, which adds substance to its calls for co-development, emanate from a south-south cooperation logic and is in line with economic integration initiatives including the African free trade area. Read more
There is more to digital payments in Africa than M-Pesa
According to Brookings, intra-African trade is at 17% compared to 59% in Asia and 69% in Europe. The implementation of the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) is expected to boost intra-Africa trade by up to 52%, by eliminating import duties and reducing other barriers to trade. (…)Mobile has enabled innovative business models that have helped SMEs compete on an even footing with much bigger companies.” He calls attention to the fact that ecommerce in Africa was valued at $16.5 billion in 2017 and a McKinsey report revealed that this value could well go up to $75 billion by 2025. Read more
Bloomberg Invest Conference
Discussion with Wamkele Mene, the Secretary General of the African Continental Free Trade Area Secretariat
Abrabrand Blog
AfCFTA: An Opportunity for Meaningful Reform on Corruption Toward Further Attracting American Investments to the Continent by Guest Writers
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The Future is not what it used to be- Africa and Education of Tomorrow by Guest Writer
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Africa Must Stop Reacting and Start Acting: Urban Design is the Antidote for the Continent’s Next Health Crisis
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Facts about Trade & Africa
Gold remained the principal product in the trans-Saharan trade, followed by kola nuts and slaves.
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It is to fight the legacy of racial prejudices, still disseminated through the media, cinema, television, textbooks that the United Nations has proclaimed in 2014 the International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024) for the fulfilment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms of people of African descent and to promote their contribution to humankind.
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