Africa to cut its reliance on West, unfair raw material trade practices – AfCFTA, Uganda leaders

African countries must reduce their reliance on other Western countries by boosting intra-Africa trade and also by eliminating their exploitation of Africa’s raw materials, according to the AfCFTA Secretary General and Uganda’s president.
Speaking at the 2023 Zenith Bank International Trade Seminar on Non-Oil Export, the Secretary General of AfCFTA, Wamkele Mene, said that economic diversification must also be the major objective for Africa’s intra-trade activities to increase their contribution to the global GDP. While highlighting the huge trade deficit between Africa and the rest of the world, Mene noted that “economic diversification must continue to be Africa’s objective to reduce national resources accounting for the greatest share of export earnings in government revenue.” Wamkele also stressed that while “55 countries in Africa contribute only 3.1% to global GDP and only 2.2% to global trading output”, other countries, “such as Singapore, contribute over 6% to global trade and output.”
On food security in Africa, Wamkele noted that intra-African trade would help Africa reduce its dependency on others and make the continent less vulnerable to geo-political crises in the world. “President Kagame reminded us the other day that a country of 43 million people in Europe is feeding a continent of 1.3 billion people. We must take action to reverse this dependency of Africa on others whether it is for our food security or indeed our public health,” the AfCFTA chief said. In a separate but related development, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, speaking at the G25 Africa Coffee Summit, highlighted the loss of jobs and money that African countries face when exporting unprocessed goods at a low cost. He stressed that selling a kilogram of bean coffee in its raw form may only fetch around US$2.50, while the same quantity of coffee that is roasted, ground, and packaged may sell for as much as US$40. To that end, Museveni expressed concern over the parasitic global system, where European countries take advantage of Africa’s raw materials, only to profit from their transformed products at a higher cost.