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The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) announced in November 2017 that its Secretariat had ‘completed the design of the digital free trade area’, and that t...

The 11th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO), held in Buenos Aires in December 2017, was a disappointment. It has been described in The Economist as “the...

The themes chosen for the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting at Davos-Klosters, Switzerland are sometimes rather different to the topics the world’s political and economic l...

This Trade Brief takes a look at a feature of African trade arrangements which has given rise to little discussion or concern. The legal instruments underpinning African trade arra...

The word indaba has found widespread use throughout Southern Africa. It refers to an important meeting, usually of like-minded people, to decide matters of mutual concern...

On Friday 8 December 2017, high-level negotiators from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK) and the European Union (EU) reached a last-minute agreement to ...

African countries, under the auspices of the African Union, are negotiating the Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) which is expected to be launched in December 2017. The CFTA is ex...

The British Prime Minister has made another important speech on her government’s Brexit plans in an address to Parliament on Monday, 9 October 2017. It was meant to explain ...

The British Prime Minister has delivered two major speeches this year on how her government wants to negotiate its exit from the European Union (EU) and what the post-Brexit deal s...

The South African clothing sector has been under significant pressure in recent years as it attempts to become internationally competitive. This Trade Brief looks at how import tar...

In the past few months, trade in second-hand clothes has led to much debate on the African continent. Second-hand clothes are being sent to Africa, either having been donated for c...

The Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) Agreement provides for interim as well as final Trade Remedies (TR) provisions. This was necessary because the Annex and the Guidelines o...

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) was established to achieve, among other objectives, development and economic growth and poverty alleviation through regional integ...

In many ways, the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) is an unsung success story. SACU is technically a customs union for trade in goods, and has been notified as such to th...

The South African Parliament is about to adopt the new Border Management Authority Act. This Act has to address longstanding concerns in Government about border security in So...

Poultry consumption accounted for 60% of total animal protein consumption in South Africa in 2016, dwarfing the total consumption of pork, beef and veal and sheep. South Africa con...

The European Union has been negotiating the World Trade Organisation (WTO)-compatible Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of ...

President Donald Trump was elected on a platform that emphasized bringing jobs back to the United States (US) that had been lost to foreign competition. A recent report from the Of...

According to the Economic Complexity Index (ECI), Kenya is the 107th largest export economy. However, it suffers from a chronic negative trade balance as a result of overreliance o...

The Paris Agreement is an international deal between 195 participating countries to gradually decrease greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions directly linked to climate change. It aspires ...