Zim-Ghana bullish AfCTA will boost trade

SIGNIFICANT potential exists for Zimbabwe and Ghana to substantially increase trade between them under the framework of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCTA), Zimbabwe’s Ambassador to Ghana Dr Kufa Edward Chizona has said.

Ambassador Chizona said this in his opening remarks at the Zimbabwe-Ghana Business Forum, which opened in Accra, Ghana, yesterday and runs until Wednesday.

Tuesday and Wednesday will mainly entail business-to-business interactions.

Several Zimbabwean firms are participating in the business forum, among them, beverages maker Schweppes Zimbabwe, Cains Foods Limited, spreads and snacks manufacturer and distributor Associated Foods Zimbabwe, and arts and crafts and dried foods company Merripaks Investments.

“The business forum comes after ZimTrade, Zimbabwe’s trade development and promotion agency conducted a market survey in April last year. The findings indicated that there was potential to increase trade between the two countries,” Ambassador Chinoza said.

Zimbabwe and Ghana have both signed and ratified the AfCTA agreement, which is a panacea to resolve some of the challenges faced when trading within the African continent. Despite the good political relations between Accra and Harare, trade has remained minuscule.

“It is my fervent hope that with initiatives such as the AfCTA trade agreement and business linkages through forums such as this, we will see a change in the current trajectory,” Ambassador Chinoza told delegates.

He urged ZimTrade and its counterpart, Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA), to continue the work together to provide up-to-date trade information and market intelligence to their clients and stakeholders to assist them to diversify and explore new markets.

“These initiatives can, indeed, lead to increased trade between our two countries,” Ambassador Chinoza.

Statistics from the AfCTA show that trade between Zimbabwe and Ghana stood at just over US$3 million in 2022.

Intra-Africa trade remains at low levels, Ambassador Chinoza said, averaging below 18 percent. As policymakers, he said doors were open to further suggestions and recommendations on how “we can support you, the business people, to increase bilateral trade and Intra-Africa trade”.

The market survey conducted by ZimTrade in Ghana noted that there were business opportunities to be further investigated by players on both sides. Ambassador Chinoza said the business-to-business meetings to be held during the business forum event will contribute towards bringing those opportunities to fruition.

Ambassador Chinoza assured delegates that as the Embassy of Zimbabwe in Ghana, “Zimbabwe is open for business”.

This comes as President Mnangagwa has been at the forefront of advocating for stronger economic ties within Africa. “We challenge Ghanaian business people to explore opportunities available for them in Zimbabwe,” Amb Chinoza said.

He said it was gratifying to note that two frameworks, namely the General Cooperation Agreement (GCA) between Zimbabwe and Ghana, and a Memorandum of Understanding on the establishment of the Zimbabwe-Ghana Business Council were ready for signature by the two countries.

Speaking at the same event immediate former Ghana Minister of Food and Agriculture Owusu Afriyie Akoto implored Zimbabwe and Ghana to make efforts to ensure business interactions such as the one currently underway in Accra should not be one-off events.

He said the current geopolitical and global economic situation exhorted Africans to find solutions to their problems. The Ghanaian agriculture minister said the volume of trade amongst Africans was tiny compared to total global trade, which calls for Africa to increase trade among its countries.

He said it was the intention of the African Union’s founding fathers to grow trade among African countries, adding that although this could not be achieved during their time, progress had been made to realise the vision through AfCTA.

“Your Excellences, one of our main challenges is to convert mere rhetoric into real action,” he said.

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AfCTA secretary general Wamkele Mene told delegates that trade between Zimbabwe and Ghana was critical for two main reasons; that Zimbabwe was the fifth largest producer of globally sought-after lithium and a significant grain producer on the continent.

“Zimbabwe is the fifth largest producer of lithium in the world, US$200 million worth of excess grain per year; thus the capacity to feed southern Africa and thes rest of the continent is there,” he said, adding this was critical in the face of food insecurity due to geopolitical tensions.

What has been lacking, he noted, was the legal architecture to allow trade, which has since been addressed through AfCTA.

He said the second most important point to note was that Ghana, together with Cote d’Ivoire, were the largest producers of cocoa in the world, with the two accounting for more than 70 percent of global production.

“As such AfCTA presents an opportunity for you to trade on favourable and preferential terms,” he said, adding before “the AfTCA, Zimbabwe and Ghana had to trade using WTO (World Trade Organisation ) rules”. “Exports from each other’s markets would be competing with exports from third-party countries in the markets, in Ghana and in Zimbabwe.

“So, the opportunity now for business and industrial production to scale is being presented by the AfCTA, through the elimination and reduction of various rules in the intra-Africa trade,” he said.

A total of 47 Africa Union members have ratified the legal framework for harmonisation of AfCTA trade rules, making it easier for countries to trade on the continent.

ZimTrade export promotion manager Vuyiswa Mafu said the trade promotion’s goal, after the market survey it conducted last year, was to open new markets for Zimbabwean products in line with aspirations of the National Development Strategy (NDS1).

“Exports are very much part of the NDS1, so ZimTrade as the organisation that spearheads exports we are very much in line with the Government’s programmes objective of increasing exports for the country; that’s our mandate.

“That’s our mandate really, to energize and increase Zimbabwe’s exports to other countries, so yes with the coming in of the AfCTA agreement we are hoping that as trade happens between the two countries we are preparing the way for that trade,” she said.

Mrs Mafu said the AfCTA would jerk trade between Zimbabwe, Ghana and the rest of the continent by collapsing impediments such as tariff and customs rules that existed prior to the establishment of the trade block.

“Talking to people when we came, even up to now, they are very upbeat about the event that is why they have come in their numbers. We hope that coming out of this, there will be business deals that will come out of the B2B meetings that we will have.-heald