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The Economic and Welfare Impacts of the EU-Africa Economic Partnership Agreements

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By Abdoulie Janneh
UN Under-Secretary General andExecutive Secretary

13 April 2006
Addis Ababa

Your Excellencies

Ladies and Gentlemen

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to this Partnership Roundtable of the African Trade Policy Centre of the Economic Commission for Africa. Your participation in this event bears testimony to your commitment to Africa and willingness to partner with the ECA in its efforts to promote socio-economic development in Africa. I also wish to welcome those who have traveled from outside Addis Ababa to join us at this occasion. I am confident that your contribution to our deliberations will go a long way in ensuring the success of the Roundtable.

Distinguished Guests,

The formation of active partnerships with the African Union, the African Development Bank, UNDP and other UN agencies as well as Bilateral Partners is central to our vision in the ECA for sharpening the focus of our activities and improving service delivery to our member states. In my view, such relationship should facilitate an exchange of views and a strategic engagement with our partners across the board. It should also assist us in identifying potential areas of cooperation as well as priorities and modalities for the joint delivery of services to our clients.

It is in against this background that this Partnership Roundtable of the African Trade Policy Centre has been arranged. The Centre was set up within the Trade and Regional Integration Division of the ECA in 2003 with the financial support of the Canadian Government through the Canada Fund for Africa. The main objective of the ATPC is to assist African countries in formulating and implementing sound trade policies and to enable them participate more effectively in international trade negotiations.

Trade is an important issue for African countries because it is generally acknowledged to be an engine of growth. It can help generate investment and provide access to intermediate and capital goods, foreign technology and essential medicines. It has also become more important for African countries because it is an important means by which they can respond to the opportunities of globalization or exposed to the risks. Of course, trade is not an end in itself but a means of reducing poverty, promoting growth and enabling more participation by women in economic activity. The imperative therefore is to ensure that trade contributes to human development in a meaningful way, which is why world leaders re-affirmed the importance of fully integrating African countries into the international trading system including through targeted trade capacity building programmes in the 2005 World Summit Outcome.

Since its establishment, the ATPC has made substantial and valuable contributions to support African countries in the area of trade but there is still a lot to be done. You will, no doubt, agree with me that African countries continue to face numerous challenges in the area of trade. Apart from the on-going need for greater integration of trade into national development strategies, it remains important to continuously up-grade the capacity of African countries to negotiate trade agreements. These agreements are becoming more difficult to manage because they are increasing in number and cover a wider range of issues. For instance, in addition to the numerous issues in the negotiations at the World Trade Organization, most African countries have to service an increasing number of Regional and Bilateral Trade Agreements including Economic Partnership Agreements with the European Union. At the same time, in addition to increasingly complex negotiations in merchandise trade, negotiations now often encompass issues such as trade in services, intellectual property issues, trade facilitation, and trade and the environment.

This Roundtable therefore provides an opportunity to exchange views on these multifarious challenges including technical assistance needs of African countries in the area of trade. It is also a good occasion to share information about the activities of the ATPC and deliberate on ways and means of strengthening it to meet future challenges. Given the increasing demands for trade policy support and capacity building in our Member States, we hope to use this occasion to broaden the support base of the Centre so that we can deepen and expand its activities and enable it to continue to deliver its services in a rapid and flexible manner.

The ECA hopes that this Partnership Roundtable will contribute ideas on how the ATPC can build on its existing activities including suggestions on how to shape its future work. A concrete outcome would include indications of support to the Centre in terms of endowing it with the resources it needs to continue to provide vital support to ECA Member States in the crucial area of trade.

In conclusion, I wish to thank you all once again for accepting our invitation to this Roundtable. In particular, I wish to thank Ambassador Boulanger and his staff in the Canadian Embassy as well as our collaborators in CIDA and the Canada Fund for Africa for their valuable contribution and unstinting support in the organization of this event.

I wish you fruitful and engaging deliberations. Thank you for your kind attention.