Improving Intra-African Trade for AfCFTA and Non-AFCFTA Trade Flows Through Trade Policy Regime: Lessons from European Union

The establishment of the Africa Continental Free Trade AreaAfrican Union, Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is a step in the right direction for the development of Africa and its economic emancipation. There are compatriot trade blocs that the new bloc can learn from, chief among them is the European Union. The objectives of this chapter, therefore, is to identify the possible areas that the AUAfrican Union, European Union can learn from the EU to achieve her objectives. AfCFTA today is the largest single free trade area in the world, either from numbers of countries or the market size. It has a combined market size of over 1.3 billion and a combined GDP of $3.4 trillion, having a potential to initially lift over 30 million African people from poverty, according to World Bank, putting it ahead of EU, North America Free Trade Area (NAFTA) and any other free trade in the world today. This comes with responsibility on the part of AU and AfCFTA to ensure that the latter is not just a giant on paper but rather a free trade area to jumpstart Africa renaissance and economic relevance in the world. There is no need to reinvent the wheel, once there are institutionalized procedures for economic and trade relations within the EU which could serve as springboard for safe take-off of AfCFTA. Intra-EU trade is more than 50% while Intra-African tradeAfrican Continental Free Trade Area, intra-African trade is in the region of 15%, this brings out the beauty of learning by doing for AfCFTA. The study concludes that, quality of institutions is key in trade facilitation if AfCFTA will achieve its objectives of enhancing intra-African tradeAfrican Continental Free Trade Area, intra-African trade, there is therefore needed to improve border operations among AU members through unified custom operations and procedures for ease of movements of goods and persons across Africa, until this is done, AfCFTA may be a white elephant project.