La Zlecaf à l’épreuve des déterminants et stratégies d’internationalisation des firmes multinationales ainsi que du régime du multilatéralisme commercial de l’OMC[The AfCFTA tests the internationalization determinants and strategies of multinational firms as well as the WTO's trade multilateralism regime]

Africa stands to gain from a free trade area (FTA) with a market of over 1.3 billion people. However, given the proliferation of trade agreements between parties to the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and third parties, globalization, which is marked by the proliferation of multinational firms (MNCs) and the membership of several African countries in the multilateral trading system (MTS) of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the African trade space will be exposed to multiple economic and financial vulnerabilities. As these foreseeable threats could undermine expectations of improved employment elasticity and domestic taxes as opposed to gateway taxation, which will be progressively eroded with the implementation of the African Free Trade Agreement (AFTA), the prerequisite for strengthening continental regional integration lies in the definition of decent, appropriate, balanced, flexible and evolving rules of origin that consider the African context. These rules of origin are the most relevant instrument of ratification that will support the preferential liberalization of intra-African trade. In addition to these rules, modern basic infrastructure and effective institutional capacities should underpin the strategies of African production factors to integrate into regional and global value chains. This will enable the African people, and their growing youth in search of opportunities, to substantially improve their living conditions through endogenous and inclusive economic growth, production of "Made in Africa" goods and services, demographic dynamics and the continent’s abundant ecosystem and fossil resources. This paper aims to analyze the AfCFTA in its entirety and complexity. It reveals that the AfCFTA, indeed, will provide opportunities for the continent. However, in many ways, these benefits will not apply to all its member states. It would depend on the public policies and strategies that each country implements to fully exploit the potential it will bring. Moreover, with the gradual abolition of tariff (NT) and non-tariff barriers (NTBs) and globalization, which is primarily a process of opening small economies to international competition, the effectiveness of the AfCFTA will be tested. Conflicts and positional wars will occur within the WTO. These trade wars, both complex and formidable, will position countries with offensive commercial interests or countries of the North and emerging economies against those with defensive economic interests, namely the AfCFTA stakeholders.