Nigeria Wants to Be the Biggest Winner From African Free Trade

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Africa’s most-populous nation has not yet signed a continent-wide free-trade deal because it wants to make sure it’s the biggest winner, and not the biggest loser, from this pact.

Nigeria seeks to make sure third parties won’t be able to dump products and threaten local producers once the African Continental Free Trade Area is established, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo said Friday at a conference in Lagos, the commercial capital.

“We are possibly the largest market in Africa and the most likely to benefit the most or lose the most from the implementation of the agreement,” Osinbajo said. The ACFTA is now at the stage of “rigorous domestic consultations,” he said.

Talks to establish the free-trade area with a combined gross domestic product of more than $3 trillion started in 2015. In May Ghana and Kenya were the first countries to ratify the deal. South Africa has signed the agreement but hasn’t ratified it yet. The target is to establish the free-trade area by 2020.

“It’s not that Nigeria is against ACFTA, but let’s do things right,” Aliko Dangote, the Nigerian billionaire who is Africa’s richest person, said at the same event. “We keep saying, ‘let’s rush, let’s rush.’ What will happen if foreign goods flood our market?”

Source: Bloomberg Business News