AfDB’s Adesina Reacts To Buhari’s Refusal To Sign Africa Trade Deal

The President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Akinwumi Adesina, has expressed optimism that Nigeria would join other African nations that have signed the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement.

About 49 nations had signed the AfCFTA agreement at the 10th Extraordinary Session of the AU summit that held in Kigali, Rwanda, in July this year.

The African free trade deal is expected to increase intra-African trade by 52.3% from about 19%.

Nigeria was meant to join in signing the deal in July but President Muhammadu Buhari reneged on the move even after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) had approved it in March.

But speaking in South Africa on Friday at the Africa Investment Forum, Adesina expressed hopes that President Buhari would sign the deal after due consideration.

“I think Nigeria is doing the right thing, actually consulting with its private sector, and having the dialogue that they need to have, and every country should have that kind of a dialogue,” he told CNBC Africa.

“I am 100 percent convinced that every single African country is going to sign it. Countries have different processes of getting consensus and stuff like that; that’s alright, but what matters for me is the end.

“Why do I think that is important? First and foremost is that if you take the continental free trade area of Africa, it is going to be the largest free trade zone in the world after since the WTO was created in the 1948 or something like that.

“You cannot ignore it, this free trade zone is going to increase the trade in Africa by about $30 billion per year.

“It is going to increase intra-Africa trade from roughly about 14, 15 percent today to 53 percent, it is going to create massive amount of jobs for us, who doesnt want to grow?” he queried.

Speaking on the foreign direct investment that Africa has recorded in 2018, the AfDB President said, “$38.7 billion is roughly 77 percent of all the foreign direct investments that Africa got this year, it is almost 94 percent of all the FDI that Africa got last year — we did that in three days.

“That tells me that Africa is ripe for investments, the critical issue is getting bankable projects,” he said.

– Obasanjo Knocks Buhari Over Refusal To Sign AfCFTA Deal –

Meanwhile, President Buhari’s refusal to sign the African free trade deal had drawn backlash from former President Olusegun Obasanjo who had suggested that the President’s hands were too weak to ink the deal.

Obasanjo had expressed confidence that his former vice, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, would sign the deal if he’s eventually voted in as Nigeria’s president in the 2019 elections.

“We will have a president who will be able to sign the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement, not the one whose hands is too weak to sign,” Obasanjo had said at the recent Babacar N’daiye Lecture that held on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund (IMF/ World bank meeting in Bali, Indonesia.