Trade Briefs
What have we learned from the AfCFTA Guided Trade Initiative?
During the 9th Meeting of the Council of Ministers held in July 2022, the Secretary General of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat, H.E. Wamkele Mene, announced the AfCFTA Secretariat Guided Trade Initiative (GTI). In his keynote address, the Secretary General described the GTI as a solution-based approach intended to achieve its goal through matchmaking businesses and products for export and import between interested state parties. The GTI was formally launched at a ceremony in Accra, Ghana, on the 7th of October 2022.
The GTI is designed to enable the start of trading under the preferences of the AfCFTA Agreement among an interested group of State Parties that are certified as having met the minimum threshold for the start of commercial meaningful trade.
The legal basis for the implementation of the GTI of the is the Ministerial Directive 1/2021 on the Application of Provisional Schedules of Tariffs Concession issued on the 10th of October 2021. This provides the basis for the start of commercially meaningful trade under the AfCFTA preferential rules.
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