Determined to strengthen its cooperation with member states to support the process of continental integration, ECA is undertaking a three-month exercise with the Government of and other stakeholders in Cameroon, to formulate a national strategy for the leveraging the African Continental Free trade Area (AfCFTA)

The AfCFTA represents a potential market of 1.2 billion consumers today, and nearly 2.5 billion in 2050, and is a powerful lever to stimulate exports, industrialization, job creation and economic diversification of the African continent.

Cameroon’s AfCFTA strategy would have to be aligned with the broader development blueprints of the country and should contribute to the emergence of credible regional value chains as well as support intra-Central Africa’s trade in intermediate and manufactured products.

Cameroon plays a very important role in Africa, in general, and in Central Africa, in particular, in terms of regional integration as well as intra-regional trade and should play its rightful role within the context of Africa’s trade agenda.

African countries party to the AfCFTA Agreement, commit to eliminate tariffs on 90% of the goods they produce destined for other African markets. In this context, intra-African trade is likely to increase by 52.3% by 2020 and attract to Cameroon, a large flow of investments and opportunities, especially for certain products such as coffee, tea, banana, pepper, refined oils, soap, brewery products, cement, as well as other manufactured and semi-finished goods.