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HOW AFRICAN STATES ARE RESISTING PRESSURE FROM THE NORTH IN TRADE
AGREEMENTS WHILE FAILING TO ASSERT THEIR PRIORITIES  
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Julie Chaudier
June 4, 2024
Equal Times [[link removed]]

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_ The history of African relations and investment governance with the
North is far more disadvantageous than in the case of trade. Current
international investment law regime protects and promotes the
interests of the capital-exporting countries. _

Ursula van der Leyen – president of the European Commission –,
poses with Kenyan president William Ruto and the delegations of both
parties at official ceremony in Nairobi, (Dati Bendo/EC - Audiovisual
Service)

 

On 29 February 2024, Members of the European Parliament voted in
favour of the EU-Kenya Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA). Presented
as a great success
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the European Commission, after 20 years of negotiations, it has, by
contrast, provoked great anger within the East African Community
(EAC).

Like Kenya, African countries are regularly offered free trade
agreements (FTAs) by the world’s major economic powers. The balance
of power is so unequal that they seem forever condemned to be the big
losers. Recent history has nonetheless shown us that there is some
scope for resisting European and US entryism, at a time when the only
place where African countries are still able to defend their trade
interests, the World Trade Organization (WTO), is in the process of
disappearing
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and the efforts to move forward with the African Continental Free
Trade Area (AfCFTA), in which so much hope is placed, are being
undermined by US and European FTAs.

Since 2000, the United States, through the African Growth and
Opportunity Act [[link removed]] (Agoa), has had a
Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) specifically dedicated to
African states, in accordance with the rules established by the WTO,
which allow developed countries to offer zero customs duties to the
least developed countries (LDCs), based on the principle of equity.
This system has, however, been abused, with conditionality being used
by the United States as an instrument of power and pressure –
economic and diplomatic – on African countries. Every year, the US
unilaterally reassesses which countries are or are no longer entitled
to preferential access to its market.

In addition to coups d’état or human rights violations, damaging
the interests of the United States leads to removal from the list of
Agoa beneficiary states
[[link removed]]. In July 2018, for
example, former US president Donald Trump suspended Rwanda
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the EAC’s decision to ban the entry of second-hand clothing
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imported from the United States, which was suffocating the local
textile sector. In January 2022, Ethiopia was excluded from Agoa based
on human rights violations, in the context of the civil war in the
Tigray region. According to Ethiopia’s former chief trade
negotiator, Mamo Mihretu, under Agoa, Ethiopia’s exports had risen
from US$28 million to US$300 million between 2000 and 2020
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The country’s exclusion led to around 100,000 job losses, mostly
in textile factories
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south of the country, employing women workers who were in no way
connected with the conflict in the north.

Going a step further, the United States has also begun calling on
African countries to conclude Trade and Investment Framework
Agreements
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it. These agreements, which provide a framework for trade relations
and facilitate US investment in Africa, are “seen as a springboard
for moving towards the negotiation of FTAs”, explains
[[link removed]] Paul
Ryberg, a lawyer and president of the African Coalition for Trade and
an advocate of Africa’s private export sector.

Already signed with eight countries and three sub-regional
communities, the TIFAs are viewed with concern by Harrison Mbori, a
Kenyan researcher at the Max Plank Institute in Luxembourg,
specialising in international law and Africa:

“The history of African relations and investment governance with the
North is far more disadvantageous than in the case of trade. The
current international investment law regime already strongly protects
and promotes the interests of the capital-exporting countries.”

If TIFAs are seen as a threat to African interests, why sign them? As
Mbori explains, “Northern countries generally use subtle threats and
incentives to secure concessions. For ACP [African, Caribbean and
Pacific] countries, the sovereign debt burden is one
[[link removed]], human rights
governance is another, more recent one. So the negotiating table is
not at all fair and equitable.”

Like the United States, the European Union has been promoting its
trade interests by signing EPAs with ACP countries since 2002, using
every argument in its power to secure them. Firstly, it maintained
that EPAs were the only way for ACP countries to retain duty-free
access to the EU market, while complying with WTO rules. On this
basis, the European Union managed to threaten
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of Africa’s developing countries with the withdrawal of their
preferential access to its market if they did not agree to sign an
EPA, instead of trying to negotiate a waiver with the WTO, as it had
done with Moldova, on the grounds of its poor competitiveness.

Then, it went on to brandish the promise that African governments
would receive assistance to boost the competitiveness of their
businesses and improve their tax systems so as to shift the loss of
revenue from customs duties to domestic businesses in the form of
taxes. Between 2014 and 2019, the EU thus pledged €6.5 billion under
the Economic Partnership Agreement Development Programme (EPADP) for
developing countries in West Africa, as part of the EPA between the EU
and West Africa (ECOWAS and WAEMU). But according to experts, it was
just old aid repackaged under a new name.

International aid, even if the African states themselves are keen to
receive it, tends to make them lose sight of their basic interests. At
the WTO, in the 2000s, Nicolas Imboden, a Swiss consultant in
international trade for developing countries, accompanied certain ACP
countries in their negotiations on cotton subsidised by developed
countries, such as the United States, which were unfairly competing
with their own cotton production. “The Africans defended themselves
very well in the negotiations until the United States, the Europeans
and China started offering financial aid. I said to them: ‘Refuse!
These are poisoned gifts dependent on their goodwill, whereas the
cotton trade is sustainable and the benefits will go directly to your
farmers.’ Unfortunately, many have allowed themselves to be lulled,
corrupted by the prospect of aid. Even Burkina Faso abandoned its
demands when the United States offered it membership of Agoa,” said
the consultant.

Despite its forceful arguments, the EU has nevertheless taken between
five and 20 years to painstakingly sign EPAs with just two regions of
the African continent and four states in the other regions
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Africa’s Least Developed Countries (LDCs) have all chosen to keep
the European GSP, regulated by the WTO and offered by the EU, which
they remain eligible for based on their low level of development.
It’s quite a poor result for the EU, considering the efforts it has
made.

Some African countries that are classified as DCs and therefore denied
GSP by the EU have refused to sign EPAs, despite the threats and the
offers of European aid, as they feel they have more to lose than to
gain. Nigeria, for instance, rich in oil and gas, has chosen to
protect its fledgling industry from European exports.

The negotiations were painstaking for countries that decided to sign
an EPA to safeguard their exports to the EU, such as Ghana, Côte
d’Ivoire and Cameroon. In his article _The Economic Partnership
Agreement between the European Union and West Africa. Lessons from a
negotiation_
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Salif Koné, a senior civil servant in Côte d’Ivoire, explains:
“The EU considerably modified its position [during the negotiations.
These changes can be seen] above all in the numerous special safeguard
provisions contained in the final text of the agreement, particularly
with regard to agricultural and industrial production in West
Africa.” West Africa thus managed to secure special protection for
some of its sectors against competition from European products in the
text of the EPA.

The European Union deals with the Maghreb separately from the rest of
Africa, as part of its neighbourhood policy. Morocco and Tunisia had
already signed FTAs with the EU, so in 2013 the EU asked the two
countries to sign Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreements
(DCFTAs), which are designed to cover many more aspects of economic
life and, more specifically, to lead the two countries to adopt
the _acquis communautaire_ in other words, the entire body of laws
and regulations adopted by the EU since its inception.

In Morocco
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in May 2015, Nizar Baraka, then president of the Moroccan Economic,
Social and Environmental Council, warned: “Caution will be needed in
the choice of directives we might want to transpose, because
the _acquis communautaire_ is a way of thinking, a set of values,
and we need to make sure that they are in line with the new
constitution [of 2011], and with our national values.” At that
point, negotiations had been suspended
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a year and remain so to this day.

At the same time, Jamal Belharach, chairman of the social committee of
the Moroccan employers’ association (CGEM), insisted: “We don’t
want European rigidity in Morocco, we don’t want to see our
comparative advantage undermined by convergence.” In other words,
Moroccan employers do not want more protective standards for employees
or public health, for example, which they see as restricting the
freedom and profitability of businesses. There is also opposition to
the prospect of prescriptive regulatory injunctions that would be
totally unsuited to the reality and needs of the Moroccan economy,
particularly given that 60 per cent of employment in the country is
still informal. In Tunisia, the negotiations have been suspended for
the same reasons.

Between the resistance to the EPAs and the suspension of the FTAA
negotiations, the ability of African states to define and defend their
interests is clear, despite the fact that the balance of power is
heavily weighted in favour of the EU. But even when these agreements
are relatively well negotiated, their framework is still determined by
the United States and the EU: they are the ones taking the initiative,
while Africa is limited to taking a defensive stance.

“The EPAs are the EU’s concern, but that’s not what the African
states need, and yet it’s becoming a problem for them,” says Marc
Maes, a Belgian lawyer responsible for trade policy at CND 11.11.11, a
Flemish coalition for international solidarity.

For Mbori, “Africa’s problem is not market access, but
diversifying its economies and acquiring the industrial capacity
to produce high value-added products
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And, as Maes points out, African states, like many developing
countries, “would rather see discussions on issues such as the
regulation of large fishing vessels operated by the major maritime
powers, which are depleting the oceans and preventing small-scale
coastal fishing
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ensuring the survival of African fishers. The problem is that this
issue has to be settled multilaterally.”

Yet, the weakening of the WTO, the guarantor of multilateralism, is
reducing the capacity of African states to defend their interests.
Even though it was founded to promote free trade, and despite the
means used by developed countries to exclude developing countries from
discussions, the WTO used to be the best place for countries such as
African states to defend their economic and commercial interests,
because the debates had to involve all the member states and the
decisions were taken unanimously. At the WTO, developing countries
used to be able to resist pressure from the rich countries, but in
2017, in response to the deadlock, the wealthy countries launched
a series of plurilateral negotiations
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the WTO itself, between rich countries, and from which African
countries are excluded.

So what can they do to assert their priorities when dealing with
global powers? The African Union has opted for the creation of the
African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). “The AfCFTA should be
used to increase intra-regional trade with a view to building an
industrial fabric within a framework of relatively flexible non-tariff
barriers,” says Kwami Ossadzifo Wonyra, a lecturer and researcher at
the University of Kara in Togo, specialising in international trade
law and policy. The AfCFTA, signed in 2018, could lead to the creation
of one of the largest free trade areas in the world, with 1.3 billion
consumers and a combined GDP of over US$3.4 billion.

Such a market would give Africa as a whole considerable weight in
negotiations, that is, if the EU and the United States had not already
signed EPAs and TIFAs with a member country in each African
sub-region.

“We are in a situation where the AfCFTA is seeking to establish
itself as a single market but the EU [and the United States,
editor’s note] already has a foothold everywhere,” says Maes.
“When Trump was battling to secure the signature of the TTIP, he
said he was going to give up and sign an FTA with Germany alone,
instead. This made everyone laugh, because with the single market,
everything that enters Germany has access to all the other EU
countries. But this is precisely what’s happening in Africa.”

_Julie Chaudier is a freelance journalist. She lived in Morocco for
ten years, working as a correspondent for the French-speaking press,
and is now pursuing her work as an investigative journalist and
reporter from both the south of France and Morocco._

_Equal Times is a trilingual (English, French and Spanish) global
news and opinion website focusing on labour, human rights, culture,
development, the environment, politics and the economy from a social
justice perspective. Independent and progressive, since 2012 we have
been amplifying voices, experiences and viewpoints that are either
under-represented or completely absent from mainstream news coverage.
In a media environment that often prioritises being first over being
accurate, we pride ourselves on producing well-researched, original
journalism._

_This article has been translated from French by Patricia de la Cruz_

* Africa
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* Free Trade
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* Investment Strategy
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