The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) – Feminist Considerations on Pan-African Sovereignty and the Global Geo-Political Order

By Fatimah Kelleher

INTRODUCTION

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is founded on a pan-African premise, more specifically as one of the flagship projects of the African Unions’ (AU’s) Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want, which proposes a vision of an “integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa”. This further draws on the principles of the Abuja Treaty of 1991, which laid out the blueprint for an African Economic Community within which intra-continental self-reliance was a foundation. In so doing, this underpinned the importance of a beginning to the end of the continent’s ongoing neo-colonial relationship with global northern countries that had managed to reframe the global economic order towards a continuation of that power imbalance, despite initial post-independence moves by certain countries that had envisaged and started to deliver pro-Africa policies that would decrease dependencies created by colonial relationships (Regions Refocus, 2020).

As such, the AfCFTA could be viewed as our first big attempt since those early independence moves towards forging meaningful sovereignty. This means not only economically integrating the continent towards long-coveted industrialisation, but also altering the imbalances of power that exists between Africa and the global northern countries and blocks that have historically extracted from the continent for their industrialisation and continued consumption needs. Inherent within this promise is a move away from current dependencies on the export of primary commodities. This dependence was created under colonialism to fuel global Northern development and – post independence – are a continued neo-colonial reality fuelled by global Northern excessive consumption that simultaneously thwart Africa’s industrialisation efforts. This leaves her volatile to economic precarity and constant indebtedness while disproportionately damaging the continent in terms of ecological breakdown. Amidst these geopolitics, the AfCFTA, therefore, carries a subtext that the process will grow the unity and solidarity of Africans, ultimately ensuring the long-awaited, genuine independence and sovereign decision-making power for African states. Inherent within this, it can also be argued that this heralds Africa’s overdue decolonisation from global political and economic hegemonies.