Trade and other non-political multilateral decisions (by many countries) can affect greatly the life of people. As an example, the decision of allowing the use of vegetable fats other than cocoa butter in the manufacture of chocolate, will make a large sector of the economy collapse in all the cocoa producer countries (Ivory Coast, Senegal, …). The immediate consequence of this decision was a reduction in demand for cocoa beans ; accompanied by sharp drop in cocoa prices ; loss of jobs in cocoa-processing industry ; loss in export earnings which might have strong consequences in the public expenditure and even interrupt the industrialization and modernization of other sectors.
The Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs), expands world-wide the protection on inventions, new articles… through a system of patents, trade-marks, etc.…preventing piracy; Ex. music, art, films, computer programmes, CD-ROM…. It deals also with the patenting of living organisms.
The pillars of the globalizing economy are: « free trade » focus of the WTO, the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP) of the International Monetary fund (IMF) and the Multilateral Development Banks which required African countries to open their markets. The General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), dealing with the trade in goods and custom tariffs.
The General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS), dealing with the liberalization of electricity, telecommunications, energy, finances, transports, education …
And Africans must begin trading more with each other. "Africans trade the least with each other than all the other continents. It is improving. We are seeing a greater increase.
The reason that is important is that you are unlikely to be competitive globally if you are not competitive regionally. So until they open their borders with each other and trade with each other, you are not going to get the level of competition that will allow them to be major providers of any product globally