Plain-language glossary facilitates understanding of the AfCFTA

In December 2022 we published a post titled “A glossary and a private sector mapping study to support AfCFTA implementation”, announcing the launch by the AfCFTA Secretariat, jointly with the International Trade Centre (ITC), of a publication titled “Understanding the African Continental Free Trade Area: a glossary”. The purpose of this booklet, which has now been made available on the AfCFTA Secretariat website, is to provide some historical context regarding the birth of the agreement, its objectives and status of implementation and, above all, to facilitate the understanding of the key concepts, legal provisions and technical rules at the basis of the AfCFTA Agreement and its complementary Protocols.

The glossary explains terms such as “customs transit”, “free trade area”, “non-tariff-measure”, “rules of origin”, “value chains” and many others, trying to decode and put into an understandable language a series of technical terms that are often hard to comprehend for the general public. The objective of this publication is to increase awareness of the AfCFTA, and (more importantly), to incite African businesses to trade under the agreement by decrypting its contents.