Why Financing Government is more rewarding in Africa than financing enterprise and the threat to economic integration
The African Continental Free Trade Area aims to increase intra-African trade, which currently stands between 16% and 17%. Economic integration is expected to improve production, investment, and trade for a population of 1.5 billion people. This growth is intended to create jobs and shared prosperity. Current efforts focus on urging governments to implement two specific drivers. These include visa-free travel and connected payment systems. Such systems would allow people to buy and sell across borders using mobile money wallets.
The gradual implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area has brought greater focus on the advantages of significantly increasing intra-African trade from the current 16%–17%. It is recognised that Africa’s economic integration will make it more rewarding to produce, invest and trade, boosting growth, jobs and shared prosperity across Africa and her 1.5 billion-strong population. The campaign now, and rightly so, is about getting African governments to enable two low-hanging key drivers of intra-African trade: visa-free travel and connected payment systems that allow Africans to move freely, buy and sell across borders using simply their mobile money wallets. This is because, according to the research desk of the Africa Prosperity Network (APN), these two moves alone can increase intra-African trade to more than 25% within the first five years of implementation.