ECA launches e-Commerce platform as African trade and transport officials begin discussions on Aid for Trade strategies

Addis Ababa, 12 March 2009 (ECA) – The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) will launch the Pan African Alliance on E-Commerce to intensify cooperation and initiate common projects of interest in African countries, as part of a two-day workshop on Trade Facilitation and Aid for Trade opens in Addis Ababa today.

The Alliance hopes to establish and encourage the use of “Single Window” across the continent. Single window is an electronic platform where traders undertake transactions on line, reducing the need for paperwork. Senegal , Tunisia and Mauritius have such platforms, dramatically reducing the time it takes to clear customs in those countries.

Trade and transport officials from more than 20 countries from across Africa are taking part in the workshop, which was organized by ECA's African Trade Policy Centre (ATPC).

Representatives from Ministries of trade and transport, Regional Economic Communities (RECs), customs authorities, port authorities, chambers of commerce, transit agents, transport operators, international organizations, and the donor community will examine effective strategies for aid for trade in order to sustain the gains of trade facilitation in Africa .

The Aid for Trade Initiative was launched with the purpose of helping developing countries, the least developed in particular, to build their supply-side capacity and infrastructure needed to take advantage of trade liberalisation and enhance their participation in the world trading system in order to meet their economic development needs.

The objectives of the two-day workshop are to exchange views on national trade facilitation programmes and projects; identify ongoing donor support and funding gaps in regional and national trade facilitation programmes and projects as well as priority areas for consideration under the Aid for Trade Initiative (AFT).

It will also articulate elements for national and regional AFT strategies and identify ongoing donor support, implementation gaps and priorities of supply-side constraints to global trade including economic infrastructure and productive capacities.

The workshop, which ends tomorrow, is expected to articulate an African common position on aid for trade strategies.

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