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KIU Business Desk: African Continental Free Trade Area to Move Forward Despite COVID-19

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KIU, Western Campus -  Wamkele Mene, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement top official has said that the Africa-wide free-trade agreement is unlikely to face any further delays even if a second wave of COVID-19 infections hits the region, according to Al Jazeera.

"If the pandemic continues into 2021, we will develop the necessary public-health protocols to continue and to push on with the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area," Al Jazeera quoted Wamkele Mene (in the picture) as saying in an interview at the Bloomberg Invest Global virtual conference on Tuesday.

The AfCFTA will be the world’s biggest free-trade zone by area if it becomes fully operational by 2030 as expected.

President Yoweri Museveni, one of the biggest advocates of the agreement has repeatedly hailed the deal as the key to Africa’s economic prosperity.

“China has a market of 1.3 billion people, and yet it still looks actively for markets outside its frontiers. Africa should do the same,” said President Museveni, while addressing the 21st COMESA International Trade Fair and High-Level Business Summit in Nairobi, Kenya in 2019. 

Picture credit: EWN