The International Trade Centre has said aid for trade cannot work as the direction of future official development assistance (ODA) decisions by governments remains hazy.
In her contribution to the 2025 Ibrahim Forum Report: Financing The Africa We Want, the centre’s executive director Pamela Coke-Hamilton said since the year began, over 150 restrictive trade measures have been put in place by governments, with more expected to be feared to be on the horizon.
She said concerns over the stability of the international trading system are now running rampant, with any disruptions coming at real costs for those who can least afford it.
Said Coke-Hamilton: “The field of international development has been turned upside down, even as some of the more recent shifts often reflect an intensification of longer-running trends.
“Many aid budgets have been cut, while many donors are shifting their priorities to meet a wide range of demands and continue living up to their commitments to their taxpayers.”
She said that already, ODA cuts that governments have announced in 2025 could amount to between a nine and 17 percent drop from last year’s ODA levels, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s latest projections.
“That is where agreements like the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) come in.
“The AfCFTA’s potential economic gains are immense: if tariffs within the continent are fully slashed, intra-African trade could grow by an impressive $22 billion by 2029.”
Along with slashing tariffs, the treaty includes dedicated protocols on critical issues ranging from women and youth to intellectual property and the digital economy. It has a dedicated investment protocol for increasing intra-African investment flows critical for greater financial self-sufficiency and sets out measures for making the investment environment more predictable.
The agreement can also make it possible for governments to develop a far larger resource base domestically, facilitating domestic resource mobilisation and improving revenue predictability and resource management.
Ministry of Trade and Industry has been encouraging local firms to start utilising the AfCFTA Guided Trade Initiative (GTI) meant to accelerate trading by enabling commercially meaningful trading and test the operational, institutional, legal and trade policy environment under the AfCFTA.
Ministry of Industry and Trade spokesperson Patrick Botha said the ministry and AfCFTA secretariat will be helping them with export guidance under GTI once they are ready.”
However, Malawi Confederation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (MCCCI) chief executive officer Daisy Kambalame said while lack of information is slowing the uptake of the AfCFTA pilot initiative, “challenges facing the businesses sector could make Malawian goods and services uncompetitive initiative”.
The AfCFTA is a trade pact that creates a harmonised and integrated continental market of 1.2 billion people in 55 countries with a combined gross domestic product valued at $3.4 trillion.
The Malawi Government recognises the AfCFTA as an opportunity to achieve its goal of expanding and diversifying the export products and services at regional and global levels under the National Export Strategy II.
