President and Chief Executive of ??angote Industries Limited, and Africa’s richest man, Aliko ??angote, has expressed concern over workings of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area agreement, (AfCFTA), which Nigeria is a signatory.
While speaking on Intra-Africa trade issues, during an interview on a CNN programme: Connecting Africa, ?angote argued that Nigeria is not against the AfCFTA, pointing out that the regional economic block needs to function properly before a continent-wide agreement can prosper.
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?The business mogul shared an experience, saying: ?“I am going to Egypt tomorrow; but I need a visa. They are saying that they will give me a visa on arrival if I have an American visa.
“But I am an African, and Egypt is part and parcel of AfCFTA. But they are saying: ‘no, if you have an American visa, we will give you’. So, they are discounting me, being an African. So, how do we trade if you’re not allowing me into their country? ?These are the issues.
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?”What I would love to see is a South African come into Nigeria to get a job without hassle. If you don’t integrate, we will never see what we call prosperity. Integration is very important. If you remember, most countries used to have what we call the Ministry of Integration, but I don’t know what happened. Some of the countries have dropped this, and it doesn’t make sense”.
?Stakeholders have also pointed out the lack of trust amongst the African regional blocs as one of the biggest impediments to trade within tge continent. According to an observer, the only working economic bloc that understands themselves is East and South Africa, saying, “Little wonder COMESA has been a success. In fact, it appears none of the regional blocs take ECOWAS seriously. Despite AcFTA, intra Africa trade is still very low”.
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???angote, however, said he believes it could be beneficial: “The AfCFTA will be very, very beneficial. If you are talking about benefits, our company will almost be one of the top five in terms of benefitting from the free-trade agreement. But I have not seen any improvement. We have 3 million tonnes of Urea we export to African countries, and we have petroleum products to export. We have cement to export. We have too many things to export.
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?”What makes sense is to have the free-trade agreement work. The trade between Africans is only about 16 percent, which is too low. We have to make sure that all the regional markets have to remove these requirements of visas.
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?”We have to allow free movement of people, free movement of goods and services, and the Afcta will work. Without that, it is almost impossible”, he emphasised.
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?Speaking on his refinery, ??angote said that in retrospect, had he known the grand scope of what he was getting involved in building his refinery, he wouldn’t have tried it.
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?According to ??angote, ?“People don’t really understand what we undertook to build the refinery. In fact, we didn’t know what we were getting into. We wouldn’t have tried it. It was very, very, very tough”.
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?Even Aliko Dangote himself asked the CNN anchor, Eleni Giokos, “Why do you think Africa is not growing as it should?” ???angote answered the question himself: “It is because we export raw materials and import finished goods. It doesn’t matter what it is; whether it is gold or whatever. A raw material is always at a ridiculously priced amount compared to the finished goods”.
