Search results

The conclusion of a trade agreement does not guarantee new trade flows. For that to happen, the reasons why trade between certain countries is at low levels must be addressed. Effe...

Road transport plays a critical role in facilitating trade and enhancing regional integration in Africa, and it is an indispensable input to international economic cooperation and ...

An objective of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) is to create a liberalised market for goods and services. To achieve this, the AfCFTA provides for progressive...

Even under the immense challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic on the African continent, great opportunities exist for the expansion of trade through trade and development financ...

Borders and border control matter. A starker reminder of this simple truth could hardly be found than the Covid-19 pandemic. It caused worldwide ‘lockdowns’ and border closures...

The International Trade Administration Commission (ITAC) was established through an Act of Parliament, the International Trade Administration Act, 2002 (Act No. 71 of 2002), which ...

When one speaks to the private sector operators (freight forwarders in particular) involved in the business of clearing goods for export to African states, their biggest complaints...

Digital labour platforms are applications that run on computers and smart devices and are able to facilitate new online markets for services of diverse types. These platforms disru...

When private sector stakeholders are encouraged to report instances of encountering NTBs on a public monitoring platform such as tradebarriers.org, the assumption is that their com...

Services are vital for economic growth. The services sector is the most rapidly growing segment of the world economy. It adds significant value to manufacturing and agricultural pr...

On 29 March 2017, the UK Government notified the European Council that it wanted to withdraw from the European Union (EU). This happened after a referendum on 23 June 2016 in which...

Domestic (or national) courts play an important role in the settlement of trade disputes. One of the main reasons is that the parties to the dispute are likely to be familiar with ...

There have been several studies about the extensive economic gains that will be generated by the AfCFTA, despite the fact that essential aspects (the extent and tempo of the tariff...

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is anchored in legal instruments regulating the functioning of this ambitious arrangement. As the AfCFTA deal presently stands, tra...

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) came into being on 1 January 1995. It is the embodiment of a remarkable international development. The architecture of the WTO system confers a s...

Two recurring themes in discussions of the courts of justice of African regional economic communities (RECs) are that African states do not litigate against each other (except when...

Realising the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) was never going to be easy. The challenges are about agreeing on a design for integrating a large number of economies at ...

One of the early and notable achievements of the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD), established in 1964, was to conceive the Generalised System of Prefer...

In 2018, only 15 per cent of Africa’s exports were intra-Africa, of which most were exports among African countries which are members of the same regional economic communities (R...

On 6 February 2020, US President Donald Trump announced the United States’ intention to initiate negotiations with Kenya on a bilateral Free Trade Area (FTA). This followed a mee...