Rwanda is set to host a major investment forum on August 9 with focus being placed on the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and how to attract Foreign Direct Investments.
The forum is dubbed the Golden Business Forum and is set to host over 600 investors and delegates from across the world.
Set to take place at Rwanda’s Radisson Blu and Convention Center it will seek to connect Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to the rest of the world.
Rwanda Private Sector Federation (PSF) is the organizing body. It’s Chief Executive Officer, Stephen Ruzibiza told KT Press in Rwanda that “There has been dealings even before the AfCFTA but there has been less intra-trade among the African countries.
Countries have been doing it individually without concerted efforts with their counterparts. So we haven’t had these ways of common negotiations and that is why we organized this forum.”
Launch of a major trade deal
African leaders in July this year finally launched the much talked about continental free-trade zone in in Niger’s capital Niamey.
It would be the world’s largest free trade area uniting 1.3 billion people and creating a $3.4 trillion economic bloc.
The free trade zone is considered a critical action to usher Africa into a new era of development.
The African Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) will have 54 African Union (AU) members.
African countries only do about 16 per cent of their business with each other with the African Union hoping to change this trend.
The CFTA is a major project of the AU’s long-term development plan Agenda 2063, which emphasis the need to ease trade and travel across the continent.
44 African leaders in March of 2018 signed onto the free trade area initially at a gathering in Rwanda with countries like Nigeria and Uganda missing out at the time.
Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame played a key role in getting deal succeeding when he was chairman of the African Union.
Source: Africafeeds.com
