The Executive Director of Ghana Developing Communities Association (GDCA), Osman Abdel Rahaman, who made the call, said although AfCFTA provided a bigger platform for the nation's economic growth, realising those gains required transparency, accountability and active involvement of all stakeholders.

AfCFTA offers access to an expanded market of more than 1.3 billion consumers across the continent. 

He also emphasised the need for continuous investment in capacity building of local government institutions and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to enable them to engage effectively in the intra-African trade.

Event 

Alhaji Abdel Rahaman was speaking at a press conference to commemorate this year’s Africa Decentralisation and Local Development Day (ADD) in Tamale last Thursday.

The celebration was on the theme: “Accelerating the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA)”.

It highlighted pertinent issues and also created awareness and understanding of AfCFTA's provisions and the opportunities the trading bloc presented for businesses, especially SMEs and member countries’ citizens.

The ADD day is commemorated by AU member states on August 10 every year.

Decentralisation 

Alhaji Abdel Rahaman further said most trade policy initiatives often remained at the continental and national levels without being decentralised at the local levels, a development which, he said, had been affecting the effective implementation of such policies.

He, therefore, called for increased awareness creation of AfCFTA among SMEs at the local level as they were the pivot of the intervention and added that “a decentralised approach of the massive potential of AfCFTA will lead to unparalleled socio-economic growth of the country and the broader African continent”.