JOHN Kuffor, former President of Ghana, has accused African leaders of paying lip service to the issue of trade integration in the continent. Speaking in Abuja at a business forum in the on-going New Economic Partnership for African Development (Nepad) Africa trade fair on indigenous products and services, Kuffor regretted that, in reality, African leaders have given primacy to political union than trade integration on the continent.
He submitted that relegating trade integration to the back burner has, more than any other thing, been responsible for Africa not making any head way for the call for unification whether continentally or regionally.
Kuffor said the continental leaders must go back to the drawing board with strong commitment to explore how Africa can use trade as the first step towards integration.
He said the leadership of the continent should understand that trade is a vehicle through which they can attain the African Union they have been canvassing for the past three decades.
According to him, “if you take West Africa alone, we will find a quarter of a billion people, which means that we will be engendering wealth that will facilitate the laying of infrastructure in terms of education, transportation, power, telecommunication which are the necessary underpinning for real unity.”
The former President of Ghana noted that the political unity or union will come to provide the framework of uniformity of values of laws and security which will be needed to sustain common interest as one people, one market that will command the attention of investors from all over the world.
He said for the West African sub-region, until they remove the colonial barriers that are preventing her from having a common market or allowing people to move freely across borders and also facilitating the private sector to produce and supply every where, the region cannot be integrated to get the benefit of trade.
Earlier, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, chairman of the forum, stressed the need for African countries to cut down visa rules in order to allow Africans move freely to trade within the continent. Tukur who is also President of the African Business Roundtable (ABR) and chairman of the Nepad Business Group, challenged the African leadership to have the political will to implement all the protocols on trade integration.