As part of its participation at the 7th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD, Yokohama, Japan 28-30 August 2019), UNCTAD and the African Union (AU) Commission organized an official side event on the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement on the afternoon of Thursday, 29 August 2019.
The occasion allowed UNCTAD and the AU to introduce the landmark agreement to establish the AfCFTA, as had been mentioned by numerous African Heads of State during the plenary of TICAD, and to showcase the work that both UNCTAD’s Division on Trade in International Goods and the Division on Investment and Enterprise are doing to support the negotiations on non-tariff measures commitments and the AfCFTA protocol on intellectual property, respectively, under a project funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation (BMZ).
The underlying message was the need for continued technical assistance to support the future negotiations and implementation now that the AfCFTA agreement has come into force.
