SPECIAL REPORT
The Bank has committed $24 billion towards agriculture
and agricultural industrialisation over the next ten years
to modernise African agriculture and to create quality jobs
for hundreds of millions of our unemployed youth.
Africa’s youth population will climb to 840 million by
2050 and with economic development, Africa will have
millions of jobs available over the next 20 years. It will
be both the workshop and the foreign investment focus of
the world, with a young, skilled and hard-working labour
force and plenty of sites for factories and offi ces.
Over the next 10 years, the African Development Bank
will facilitate a cumulative investment of $56 billion for
six fl agship industrialisation programmes. The Bank’s
ambition is to help double the industrial GDP of African
economies to $1.72 trillion by 2025, over 30 percent of
the overall GDP.
The High 5s articulate bold ambitions for Africa that
can only be achieved through partnerships involving
the private sector. Only through huge and lucrative
investments can Africans gain full employment, and Africa
achieves economic transformation through modernisation
and industrialisation.
The African Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA)
signed by 44 African countries is considered to
be a landmark agreement. How will the African
Development Bank support and promote the CFTA?
The Free Trade area will stimulate intra-African
trade by up to $35 billion per year, creating a 52 percent
increase in trade by 2022, and a vital $10 billion decrease
in imports from outside Africa. The African food and
agriculture market will hit $1 trillion by 2030. Household
consumption will hit $2.1 trillion, with business-to-
business expenditure at $3.5 trillion by 2025. Agriculture
and industrial exports will rise to $45 billion (7%) and $21
billion (5%), respectively.
Regional integration and trade based upon the free
movement of persons, goods, services, and capital have
always been at the core of the business of the African
Development Bank, which is accelerating the full imple-
mentation of the High 5s, in particular, ‘Integrate Africa’.
Africa has the largest concentration of landlocked
countries of any region in the world – 16 out of 54.
This is why transport infrastructure features so largely
in the Bank’s priorities: ports, roads, railways and other
connectivity projects ensure no country is left behind in
our efforts to bring together our 54 markets into a mutually
profi table free trade area.
In the last fi ve years, the Bank’s commitments to
infrastructure have totalled more than $12 billion, most
going to cross-border transport, energy, fi nance, and ICT
operations. We have worked closely with our partners to
identify and undertake regional infrastructure projects
under the Programme for Infrastructure Development in
Africa (PIDA) with a $10 million grant.
To accelerate trade facilitation, the Bank has invested
more than $20 million over the past fi ve years in trade
agreement support, and cross-border transport and energy
soft infrastructure. It is now for Regional Economic
Communities and national governments to create the
critical synergies between bilateral and regional trade
agreements, and the CFTA. But this is not just about tariffs
or trade. Three principles must be respected for the true
African dividend to yield.
The measures must be inclusive. Within Southern
Africa alone, women account for 80 percent of all informal
cross-border traders and generate revenues ranging from
an average of $7 billion to $17.6 billion annually. Africa
must be gender-sensitive in the implementation of the
CFTA. The measures must be fair. Proposals to continue
protection for existing regimes, products and industries
must all be rejected. The CFTA must insist upon equitable
market integration to realise a common, single and
prosperous African market as per the Abuja Treaty. No
exceptions. No special cases. Neighbours should no longer
beg their neighbours.
All 54 member countries are equal owners in the pursuit
of market integration on a level playing fi eld. Africa, alone,
can turn this vision into reality. It is up to us all. And no one
else to bring this Agreement into force as soon as possible.
We owe it to the future, to our youth, and to the overdue
transformation of our continent. Let’s get there quickly!
COMESA• 2018 8 • 11