Red tape, bureaucracy is Africa’s greatest undoing
The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat is working with youth institutions across the continent to translate policies and instruments into youth-friendly instruments that can promote youth participation in regional trade.
This has been a long time coming, as observation from traders is that African governments are taking long to harness opportunities created by the AfCFTA and to ensure that policies formulated to benefit the youth do so effectively.
When buttressing the issue, Secretary General, AfCFTA Secretariat, Wamkele Mene said this week in Zambia during the AfCFTA Youth Symposium that the development of the African continent is not going to come from anybody else except from Africans.
He underscored that challenges and difficulties are so entrenched in the continent and before the smooth implementation of the AfCFTA, many hurdles would have to be dealt with.
“We must recognise that there will be challenges and difficulties, and instability in the continent, but my view is that if Africans don’t take the challenges head on, we will be in the periphery of global trade,” he warned.
He added that Africa should pluck a leaf from sophisticated and highly developed regional blocs like the European Union, which has been able to evolve into a powerful economic bloc over the 72 years of its existence. When commenting on the theme of Enhancing Youth Engagement in AfCFTA Trade Policy Processes for Economic Development, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Entrepreneurship, Joel Ramaphoi said for youth to participate meaningfully in the AfCFTA, they need substantial funding support and more money is needed to effectively promote youth engagement in trade policy issues.
Ramaphoi was quick however to state that this does not mean that youth cannot be engaged without money. However, that it becomes easier and predictable when there is substantial funding available to support all efforts to support inclusion.
Ramaphoi’s comment was on the backdrop of the fact that among challenges faced by the youth in trade is access to funding.
Recently, the AU announced several Trade Protocols meant to address this challenge, stating that in no time the Secretariat will offer support and assistance to youth regarding limited access to finance, issues of limited access to productive resources such as inputs in agricultural technology, limitation to trade information including the AfCFTA, address intellectual rights and competition and most importantly the formalisation of youth businesses in cross-border trade.
What Executive Adviser to the Governor of Oyo State, Nigeria, Dr. Debo Akande, has observed over time is that in African countries, policies and programmes are always there, but there is a lot of bureaucracy attached to them, making it difficult and close to impossible to implement them.
Beyond that, according to Dr. Akande, the people designing such policies matter a lot. Most of the time policies are done by older people and therefore even the urgency to implement such policies is often not there.
But if the younger generation is part of the policy formulation, the reality is that they will not view it as policy that needs to be there, but would be driven by their need to see things happen,” Dr Akande said.
Dr. Akande has also observed through his extensive work in policy formulation across the Sub-Saharan Africa that it is only close to the end of the policy development that you see younger people getting involved.
“They are often called in as mere stakeholders to endorse what is being developed. They should rather be taking the lead in the development of these policies,” he said.
Director of YouthConnekt Africa, Grace Mugabekazi’s view is that policy makers understand the needs of the youth in Africa, however, there is need to establish how policies are formulated to ensure that the views of young
people are represented.
“Looking at the AfCFTA, young people who represent over 70 percent of Africa, are the ones who are going to inherit the legacy of the AfCFTA, and so it is important that from the early works of the instrument as driven by the Secretariat, young people’s needs are included and continue into the future of Africa,” she said.
Mugabekazi further said youth need to be educated and mobilised, that is when their participation in continental trade will be unlocked.
“The challenge is that most of the time when we talk of young people we think they are not capable, not fully equipped to participate, however, most markets in Africa are led by SMEs, some of them informal, but largely driven by young people. This means that young people are participating economically,” she said.
In addition, she said there is a new breed of entrepreneurs that are not just satisfied with trading but also in adding value to locally made products.
“These are the young people that we want supported to further participate in trade across the continent.”
She added that for the effective implementation of the AfCFTA, there is need to build systems and services and ensure that the needed infrastructure is in place, including, financial, digital, logistics that enable people to trade across borders.
“Young people are best placed to solve these challenges. They also need to be organised to have a voice within this framework from national, regional all the way to continental level,” she said.
She said there is need to ensure that the youth have associations at national level, a chamber that represents youth entrepreneurs within private sector bodies, and that such a body fully participates in different conversations that are happening at national level.
Legal Practitioner and Development Consultant, Lethabo Sithole said for inclusion sake, young people who are not in policy formulation rooms need to be consulted thoroughly because ultimately, they are the beneficiaries.
“In 2021 we did a lot consultation across the continent and what we discovered in Tunisia was that a lot of young people were clueless about the AfCFTA for example, and they felt excluded.
“But these are young people who want to trade in services, move their film festivals across the continent, but they were simply not consulted,” she posited, adding that if we do not know the problem we can’t solve it.
She said there is need to strengthen the weakest link and the weakest link is in not involving young people in policy formulation.