Beyond Policy and Grandiloquence: Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Protocol as a Vehicle to Accelerate Technology and Innovation

Abstract

Technology, innovation, and legal rules are sometimes regarded as opponents. The view is that technology and innovation denote progress, novelty, and progression. However, legal rules signify certainty, stringency, and rigidity. This dichotomy is often seen at play when issues relating to intercontinental trade are determined. In these situations, the law or legal rules constitute some of the most perverse barriers to trade. They inhibit entry into the African market or hamper competition. Furthermore, legal rules are often abused by imposing stringent licensing and certification measures, currency controls or transfers, foreign exchange and equity, taxations, and equity of participations regulations. In so doing, the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Protocol is likely to be reduced to a mere paper-based endeavor. Ostensibly, the AfCFTA Protocol accelerates and boosts intra-Africa trade. It promotes the creation of lucid, translucent, certain, and mutually beneficial norms that regulate trade within the African continent. The Protocol regards technology and innovation as the instruments in terms of which the intra-Africa trade could be expanded, synchronized, and coordinated. However, the challenge relates to whether Africa has the means necessary to alleviate the existing and future legal barriers to trade and improve the capacity for Africa market accessibility. Simply, does Africa have the instruments needed to create legal rules, regulations and procedures that improve the use of digital technologies to innovate Africa trade?