The Liberalisation of Trade in Services in the African Continental Free Trade Area

What is it about?

This article engages with the recently adopted agreement for the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in the area of services. While services trade had heretofore stood at the queue of African trade pacts, the AfCFTA breaks new grounds by negotiating goods and services concurrently, signalling a paradigm shift and a commitment to a deeper integration of the continent. Upon Members’ implementation of the Protocol on Trade in Services, whose aim is to establish a single market in services, the region will be the largest economic integration agreement ever concluded since the birth of the World Trade Organization (WTO). This paper sets out to analyse the provisions of the Protocol and how they contribute to achieving the objective of attaining a single market where services (alongside goods, people and capital) move unrestricted.

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Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This paper discusses the contribution of the Protocol in the achievement of an African Economic Community characterized by free movement of people, goods, capital, and services. It elaborates on the importance of services in both developing and developed world justifying their inclusion in modern trade agreements like the AfCFTA, discusses the Protocol in Trade in Services and its integration process. What are the main legal disciplines and what they mean for the signatories, not only regarding inter se relationship, but also with the rest of the world, is critically exposed. The paper further examines the Protocol against the multilateral discipline regulating services Economic Integration Agreements (EIAs). Although it is largely inspired by the GATS, this paper finds that the Protocol espouses the peculiarities inherent to African trade pacts, including Special and Differential Treatment and variable geometry.