Nigeria would begin selling some of its products to some of the regional markets with which it has had relatively loose economic ties. The West African country has officially green-lit the sale of locally produced goods to South Africa, Rwanda, Cameroon, and Kenya. Exportation is scheduled to commence by April under an initiative from the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

Nigeria's export doors open to South Africa, Rwanda, Cameroon, and Kenya
Nigeria's export doors open to South Africa, Rwanda, Cameroon, and Kenya
Nigeria to export locally made goods to South Africa, Rwanda, Cameroon, and Kenya.
The initiative launched under AfCFTA's Guided Trade Initiative is set to formalize regional trade.

While trade with these countries prior to this initiative has been active, these trades have not been formal. The African Continental Free Trade Area is a free trade agreement created by 54 of the 55 African Union states, making it the world's biggest free trade area by number of participant countries.

“We haven’t started trading in AfCFTA, we are duly going through the protocols. But recently the AfCFTA secretariat itself launched what they call the Guided Trade Initiative to get some countries to start trading outside their regional blocks,” the Executive Secretary, of the National Action Committee on AfCFTA, Olusegun Awolowo, stated.

“We’ve signed onto it and I think that by the end of April, we are taking a few companies, big, medium, and small enterprises to actually launch trading in Africa. All we are doing now is that we are going through and signing all the protocols, as well as finding a way how to implement them. So we are now at the stage of implementation. Therefore, trading hasn’t really commenced under AfCFTA. It is not an overnight thing, you have to go through all the protocols, sign them, and agree,” he added.

“We are going to South Africa, Kenya, Cameroon and Rwanda. This is under the Guided Trade Initiative that was brought by AfCFTA, knowing that trade agreements take long.

In fact, this AfCFTA is the fastest one. How long did it take the World Trade Organisation to get on the ground? They are still signing protocols up till today. But this is the fastest one and to fast-track it, that is what the GTI is all about,” Awolowo said when asked to identify the countries that had already signed up for the GTI scheme and to whom Nigeria would legally begin exporting products.

“It is an initiative that enables countries to choose. Let’s take the companies and let them actually export from the various ports. Then we test the capacities of the ports, test the capacities of the shipments, and the capacities of cargoes. Then the private sector can fully buy into it. So that’s what is going to happen,” he added.