guest column:Admire Dube The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) was established in 2018 with the aim to create a single market for goods and services, facilitated by movement of people to deepen the economic integration of the continent, under the Pan African Vision of “An integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa.” Consolidating Africa into one trade area provides great opportunities for entrepreneurs, businesses and consumers across the continent and ultimately countries, which boosts chances to support sustainable development in the world’s least developed region. With the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic exponentially increasing the challenges of a continent already ravaged by socio-economic ills, AfCFTA offers great potential to not only offer economic mitigations against the pandemic, but also speedily extricate African nations from regression and to a path of self-betterment. 2019 statistics show that Africa’s population stood at 1,3 billion with a combined nominal GDP of US$2,58 trillion and a healthy 3,7% growth rate. This stood firmly abreast of fellow rising economies like India with the exact same population count and a GDP of US$3,2 trillion and Brazil with its nominal GDP of US$2 trillion. However, in 2020 the pandemic took a toll on African lives and economies as economic activity declined by a projected 3,3%, confirming the region’s first recession in 25 years. The substantial downturn in economic activity cost the region at least US$115 billion this year, in part caused by depressed domestic consumption and competition as investments were divested to measures for mitigating the spread of the coronavirus. This situation could also push up to approximately 40 million people into extreme poverty erasing at least five years of progress in fighting poverty. Similarly, COVID-19 could set back progress in building human capital, as school closures continue to affect nearly 253 million students, potentially causing losses in learning which does not bode well for the continent’s future. The full implementation of the AfCFTA will certainly stem a downward trajectory by progressively eliminating tariffs on intra-African trade, making it easier for African businesses to trade within the continent and benefit from the growing African market. Africa, being a diverse continent fragmented into 54 States which are organised into trade blocs and associations under the African Union as members, will necessarily morph into a single business entity, or as close to one as anyone can hope for such a heterogeneous cocktail of diverse people. COVID-19 aside, the continent already faced a myriad of social, economic, and political challenges weakening current African trading blocs and their ability to promote integration and intra-trade among each other. The share of intra-African exports among constituent countries (trade among each other) as a percentage of total exports out of the African continent was still a miniscule 17% as at 2017, which remains low compared to levels in Europe (69%), Asia (59%), and North A
