Southern African regional virtual conference on strengthening integration into the AFCFTA

Funder: OSISA: The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) is part of the global network of Open Society Foundations (OSF) and operates in 11 southern African countries: Angola, Botswana, DRC, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. OSISA promotes open society values by working towards building vibrant and tolerant democracies across the region through our various thematic and country programmes.

Activity: CUTS International held a full Virtual Conference on the September 15, 2021 themed African Southern African Regional Virtual Conference on Strengthening Integration into the AfCFTA Total registered 268 participants.

Background

This webinar was intended to focus on the regional Integration of Southern African countries. To highlight several structural and institutional weaknesses that had previously affected these regional communities and hampered the opportunities for the already existing membership in the regional economic communities like SADC and COMESA. Hence, it is worth noting that building on the weaknesses faced around competition and investment in the current RECs, including issues relating to the service industry, issues of Intellectual property rights, as well as mining and the various dynamics bordering on extractive transparency initiatives and finally, the future of RECS in the presence of AfCFTA.

CUTS Lusaka sought to hold a Southern African virtual conference to discuss the diverse prospects and challenges that need to be addressed to integrate countries into the AfCFTA successfully.