My Takeaways on the proposed Africa Private Sector Bill of Rights 

1) The aspect of having a single Investment and Trade Court.
– In my opinion, this is very necessary in ensuring expeditious and fast resolving of investment and trade disputes.

In the same breath, from my knowledge of International Economic Law, most businesses especially private sector prefer to resolve their disputes through arbitration for confidentiality purposes, to save on time, and also to maintain business relations and well as brand image.

My proposal, therefore, is to establish an African Investment and Trade Tribunal, and have treaties and laws that will govern how these disputes will be resolved in this tribunal.

We should also have a regulatory body for this tribunal, as well as governing laws.

2) The challenge of transferring funds between countries.

Personally, I experienced this when I was repaying a personal loan from a friend in Mauritius (a country in South-Eastern Africa)

I completely could not send the money via mobile money, and the bnk transactions were very high for the amount I was sending, the transaction fees were actually more than the money I was sending, so much so that I had to repay her in person when we met physically in another forum.

I therefore concur that we need to have a single currency that will make it easier to transfer funds along different jurisdictions.

This may, however, take some time, and I suggest for a beginning to have MoUs across different banks that make it easier to transfer funds, especially electronically, via mobile money.

3) Still on financial sectors, I saw a suggestion of providing loans for SME without land collateral. That is possible, because nowadays one can secure micro loans through movable property.

What can be done is to enact proper laws on Movable Property Security Rights, to ensure that there is a win-win situation for both SMEs as well as financial institutions.

4) On administrative difficulties, I saw a recommendation to remove double taxation.

From my tax law knowledge back in campus, double taxation is a big problem that affects many tax jurisdictions.
My suggestion on this is countries should sign double taxation agreements to establish which country (tax jurisdiction) will charge what, depending on where income of the business accrued, or where the parent company is situated, etc.

5) Under Political Sector, I saw a recommendation to involve businesses in the negotiation of trade regulations.
I concur entirely with this recommendation, because sadly those leaders that are involved in trade negotiations, mostly are not usually technical experts in the said business sectors and therefore are limited in terms of contributing and negotiating for trade terms that favor their countries’ businesses. Further, we could have a technical business team, or representatives of private sector business, at least in each sector, eg energy, transport etc, so that the businesses’ rights are protected and promoted during trade negotiations.

6) On the sector of Education and SMEs, I concur with the recommendation of Require local content in production and local capacity building in labour, because this will largely help tackle unemployment especially among young people, and will also promote economic development by using locally sourced production materials. This is something that many African countries (at least I can say that for Kenya) have not been keen on, so we see establishment of many manufacturing plsnts, but no positive impact on the locals or local community. All materials are outsourced (the issue of exporting potatoes into Kenya to make KFC, and for almost a month there were not selling fries because there were some hitches with the potatoes, yet there are so many quality potatoes in Kenya), and the issue of outsourcing employees especially during road constructions.

7) Generally, I love how there is a column on helpful institutions and policies, that recommends what has worked in other similar continental trade blocs in other regions such as Europe.

I am positive that this Bill of Rights will be of tremendous value to the Private Sector in their involvement with Afcfta doing international trade in Africa.

I am still reading through it, and will share more inputs as time goes by.

Kind regards,

By Valarie Waswa

[Lawyer with a budding interest in International Law]