By Modupe Gbadeyanka
Next year, the much-anticipated African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) will commence and Nigeria is expected to use the platform to increase the value of its export to the continent.
In 2018, the export value of Nigeria to Africa totalled around $6.99 billion, while to the rest of the world stood at $45.92 billion, the CEO of the Nigeria Export Promotion Council (NEPC), Mr Segun Awolowo, said.
Speaking at the Ecobank Digital Series virtual Africa Trade Conference 2020, Mr Awolowo stated that Nigeria’s export is majorly crude oil and natural gas which constitute 91 per cent.
But he said with the activation of AfCFTA, the export value of the country, the largest economy in Africa, should rise exponentially.
According to him, efforts would be made to explore the market of 1.2 billion people and combined Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $3 trillion Africa boasts of.
He said with these figures, there is huge potential for Nigeria to increase its export to Africa, noting that before now, the exports had been informal exports, but with platforms like Ecobank, it is going to be formal and add real value to the economy.
Mr Awolowo informed participants of the event that NEPC has identified areas of untapped potential for Nigeria in Africa such as fertilizer, ginger and sesame, as these are what other African countries are buying.
“Nigeria must, and can, live in a world where it no longer sells oil. Nigeria is working on key game changers in infrastructure in order to achieve this, especially in the area of ease of transportation and also in the area of incentives, export expansion grant like pre-shipment incentives and export development fund, which serve to prepare, facilitate and support exporters to the global market,” he stated.
Another speaker at the event, Mr Tei Konzi, who is the Commissioner, Trade, Customs and Free Movement at ECOWAS, explained that AfCFTA is a comprehensive trade agreement that seeks to create a single market for goods and services and free movement of persons through the progressive liberation of the market for goods and services and also contribute to the movement of capital to facilitate investment.
“We can bring these trades back to Africa and increase activity in the continent in agriculture, mining amongst others.
“We are yet to conclude our tariffs, but at the moment, ECOWAS trade more with outside countries than it does with African countries and this is why we are bent on making sure the AfCFTA succeeds,” Mr Konzi, who was represented by Mr Kolawole Sofola, the Acting Director, Trade ECOWAS, stated.
In his presentation, the CEO of Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (ETI), the parent firm of Ecobank, Mr Ade Ayeyemi, reiterated that African countries must adopt a continent-wide approach to business and also focus on wealth creation to be relevant in the global value chain.
For AfCFTA to become a reality, Mr Ayeyemi said there must be commitment and readiness for trade facilitation by the individual nations.
He noted that African governments must unequivocally commit to the agreement and their preparedness as individual nations with their implementation strategies, commitment to free movement-signing and ratification of the protocol on the free movement of people and country’s visa openness, readiness for trade facilitation – the quality of trade infrastructure and efficiency of ports/Customs, which is still work in progress in nearly all countries.
Mr Ayeyemi noted that Ecobank is fully committed to Africa as the foremost Pan-African Bank to Unequivocal support for the implementation of AfCFTA, readiness to use its unique pan-African platform to facilitate trade, payment and business and deployment of its strong Africa knowledge to support governments and businesses.
The Ecobank CEO emphasized that “no country is so poor that it has nothing to give and no country is so rich that it has nothing to receive. All of us must come together to become better.”
The Ecobank virtual Nigeria Africa Trade Conference 2020, which is part of the Ecobank Digital Series, is to showcase the bank’s unique intra-Africa trade solutions that enable settlements of international transactions and mitigation of payment risk while providing regional solutions to exporters.
Ecobank trade products and solutions are designed around two broad areas; Trade Finance and Trade Services. Trade Finance enables customers to benefit from adequate and well-mitigated credit facilitation in the area of Import finance, export finance, bill discounting, trade loans, distributor finance, payables and receivables finance, structured trade and commodity finance amongst others while trade services, offer our customers the advantage of speedy turnaround and error-free processing of their import letter of credits, import collections, avalised bills, customs bonds, export collections as well as their local purchase orders and payment invoices, via its electronic trade platforms OMNI e-Trade and OMNI eFSC (electronic financial supply chain.
