Now that Africa’s much-vaunted free trade area has launched on 1 January, there will be big fanfare and even bigger pressure mounting for South Africa’s Wamkele Mene to make it a success.
Building up the continent’s interconnections and market of more than 1 billion people is being touted as a means to fight poverty, bring development and reduce the continent’s dependence on fickle foreign markets.
Mene, elected secretary general of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in February 2020, tells The Africa Report: “I don’t want anybody to be under the illusion this is going to be easy. It’s going to be difficult, but we’ve got to do it.”
