IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/b/wbk/wbpubs/34139.html
   My bibliography  Save this book

The African Continental Free Trade Area

Author

Listed:
  • World Bank

Abstract

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement will create the largest free trade area in the world, measured by the number of countries participating. The pact will connect 1.3 billion people across 55 countries with a combined GDP valued at $3.4 trillion. It has the potential to lift 30 million people out of extreme poverty by 2035. But achieving its full potential will depend on putting in place significant policy reforms and trade facilitation measures. The scope of the agreement is considerable. It will reduce tariffs among member countries and cover policy areas, such as trade facilitation and services, as well as regulatory measures, such as sanitary standards and technical barriers to trade. It will complement existing subregional economic communities and trade agreements by offering a continent-wide regulatory framework and by regulating policy areas—such as investment and intellectual property rights protection—that have not been covered in most subregional agreements. The African Continental Free Trade Area: Economic and Distributional Effects quantifies the long-term implications of the agreement for growth, trade, poverty reduction, and employment. Its analysis goes beyond that in previous studies that have largely focused on tariff and nontariff barriers in goods—by including the effects of services and trade facilitation measures, as well as the distributional impacts on poverty, employment, and wages of female and male workers. It is designed to guide policy makers as they develop and implement the extensive range of reforms needed to realize the substantial rewards that the agreement offers. The analysis shows that full implementation of AfCFTA could boost income by 7 percent, or nearly $450 billion, in 2014 prices and market exchange rates. The agreement would also significantly expand African trade—particularly intraregional trade in manufacturing. In addition, it would increase employment opportunities and wages for unskilled workers and help close the wage gap between men and women.

Suggested Citation

  • World Bank, 2020. "The African Continental Free Trade Area," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 34139, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbpubs:34139
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/34139/9781464815591.pdf?sequence=4
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. N.M. Odhiambo, 2022. "Does Foreign Direct Investment Spur Economic Growth? New Empirical Evidence from Sub-Saharan African Countries," Working Papers AESRI-2022-20, African Economic and Social Research Institute (AESRI), revised Jul 2022.
    2. Amendolagine, Vito & Prota, Francesco, 2021. "Bilateral investment treaties and backward linkages in Sub-Saharan Africa," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 172-185.
    3. Fabien Candau & Geoffroy Guepie & Reine Kouakou, 2018. "In Gravity no Veritas: Dubious Trade Elasticiy and Weak Effects of Regional Trade Agreements in Africa," Working Papers hal-02625930, HAL.
    4. Nicholas M. Odhiambo, 2022. "Does Foreign Direct Investment Spur Economic Growth? New Empirical Evidence From Sub-Saharan African Countries," Economic Annals, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Belgrade, vol. 67(233), pages 61-84, April – J.
    5. Chichaibelu, Bezawit Beyene & Bekchanov, Maksud & von Braun, Joachim & Torero, Maximo, 2021. "The global cost of reaching a world without hunger: Investment costs and policy action opportunities," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 104(C).
    6. Fabinin, Akem Nina, 2021. "Pulse, Export and Staple Convenience Food: Market Analysis in West Africa," 2021 Conference, August 17-31, 2021, Virtual 315370, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    7. Bertha Nyarire Makilagi & Jinhwan Oh, 2023. "What determines Tanzania's trade? A gravity approach," International Area Studies Review, Center for International Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, vol. 26(4), pages 438-448, December.
    8. Damilola Kuteyi & Herwig Winkler, 2022. "Logistics Challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa and Opportunities for Digitalization," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(4), pages 1-18, February.
    9. Skylar Brooks, 2021. "Revisiting the Monetary Sovereignty Rationale for CBDCs," Discussion Papers 2021-16, Bank of Canada.
    10. Lukman OYELAMI & Amara ZONGO, 2022. "Modeling the Impact of Non-Tariff Barriers in Services on Intra-African Trade: Global Trade Analysis Project Model," Bordeaux Economics Working Papers 2022-08, Bordeaux School of Economics (BSE).
    11. Lionel Fontagné & Mathilde Lebrand & Siobhan Murray & Michele Ruta & Gianluca Santoni, 2023. "Trade and Infrastructure Integration in Africa," Working Papers 2023-14, CEPII research center.
    12. Nicholas M. Odhiambo, 2022. "Does Foreign Direct Investment Spur Economic Growth? New Empirical Evidence From Sub-Saharan African Countries," Economic Annals, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Belgrade, vol. 67(233), pages 61-84, April – J.
    13. Moubarack Lo & Amaye SY, 2022. "Défis, opportunités, impacts et facteurs de succès de la ZLECAf," Research papers & Policy papers 1952, Policy Center for the New South.
    14. Johannes Paha & Timon Sautter & Reinhard Schumacher, 2021. "Some Effects of EU Sugar Reforms on Development in Africa," Intereconomics: Review of European Economic Policy, Springer;ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics;Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), vol. 56(5), pages 288-294, September.
    15. Jonathan D. Quartey, 2021. "Addressing the Missing Link for Sustainable African Continental Free Trade: Lessons from Ghana’s Manufacturing Industry," Asian Development Policy Review, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 9(1), pages 1-23, March.
    16. Pousseni Bakouan & Mahamadou Diarra & Idrissa M. Ouedraogo, 2024. "How Can Tariff Elimination and Trade Facilitation Affect East African Economies?," Foreign Trade Review, , vol. 59(1), pages 117-145, February.
    17. Simon Yannick Fouda Ekobena & Adama Ekberg Coulibaly & Mama Keita & Antonio Pedro, 2021. "Potentials of the African Continental Free Trade Area: A combined partial and general equilibrium modeling assessment for Central Africa," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 33(3), pages 452-465, September.
    18. Stender, Frederik & Vogel, Tim, 2021. "Murky trade waters: Regional tariff commitments and non-tariff measures in Africa," IDOS Discussion Papers 13/2021, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).
    19. Dr. Caroline Ntara, 2022. "What Does Africa Stand to Gain from the African Continental Free Trade Area?," International Journal of Science and Business, IJSAB International, vol. 16(1), pages 69-90.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wbk:wbpubs:34139. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tal Ayalon (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.