Inclusive Trade in Africa: The African Continental Free Trade Area in Comparative Perspective
About this ebook
The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) will cover an African market of 1.2 billion people and GDP of over $2.5 trillion, across all 55 member States of the African Union. Yet, trade policy increasingly appreciates that free trade is not enough; trade must also be inclusive to deliver developmental benefits. With contributions from leading trade policy authors across Africa and beyond, this book offers insights into the development and implementation of the AfCFTA and serves as a reference for stakeholders interested in trade in Africa more broadly. The contributors assess what important lessons can be drawn from the experiences of regional integration in and beyond Africa, including from success stories like ASEAN as well as from failures like the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas.
An important new work for researchers and policymakers focusing on African trade and economic policy, and trade policy more generally.
About the author
David Luke is Coordinator of the African Trade Policy Centre at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. He is responsible for leading the UN Economic Commission for Africa’s (ECA) research, policy advisory services, training and capacity development on inclusive trade policies and in particular the boosting intra-African trade and the African Continental Free Trade Area initiatives. His portfolio also includes WTO, EPAs, Brexit, AGOA, Africa's trade with emerging economies and trade and cross-cutting policy areas such as trade, industrialization and structural transformation, trade and gender, trade and public health and trade and climate change. Prior to joining ECA in 2014, he served as UNDP trade policy adviser in Southern Africa and Geneva and also as Senior Economist and Chief of Trade at the Organization for African Unity/African Union Commission, and as an Associate Professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. He holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.
Jamie MacLeod is a Trade Policy Expert of the Africa Trade Policy Centre at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He has consulted broadly on trade policy issues, including with the World Bank, the European Commission and the Danish International Development Agency, and was formerly a Trade Economist at the Ghanaian Ministry of Trade and Industry. He holds an M.Sc. in Economics for Development from the University of Oxford, where he was awarded the Snell Scholarship, and an M.A. in Economics from the University of Glasgow.
