As the majority of Africa’s youth continue to face unemployment and scarce opportunites for gain, and with many African economies witnessing a slow recovery following COVID and global inflation, entrepreneur and artist, Gathige Maina is making it his mission to educate youth on the opportunities that the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) offers .
It has been over four years since AfCFTA came into force, and even though not fully implemented, intra-African trade has improved. According to the United Nations Economic Commission For Africa (UNECA), the levels of intra-African trade have increased from 13% or so, before the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement was adopted, to now around 20%.
According to Maina, the founder and director of Youth Motion, trade is a unifier. For youth especially, he says, trade gives opportunities to discover themselves and make their voice count. It is why the Youth Motion Kenya, created the AfCFTA Kazini Caravan, a mobile advocacy initiative to create awareness about the AfCFTA to youth in Kenya and the rest of Africa.
The group travels across the continent by road from one African country to the other to give a testimony that movement across Africa is indeed possible and it should be embraced now to enable intra- African trade. It shows how movement along borders is opening up new opportunities.
“Cross border movement speaks to the youth because it is the young people who are go-getters and take the risk of moving from one region to the other in search of better opportunities,” says Maina.
Half of the youth who make up the creative industry in Africa has something to look forward to as the agreement continues to develop the Protocol on youth and women of the AfCFTA. With the approval of the protocol, the youth will be meaningfully enabled in the trade arena.
“The youth are the ones to breathe life into this framework because the free movement of people can just be on paper but if we partake that movement ourselves then we would be making it work and it would go beyond it being captured on paper.”
According to Jullie Kubia, Marketing and Market research director of Africa Field Agents, a research company specializing in the African market, for the youth to effectively benefit from intra-African trade, they need entrepreneurial skills, financial literacy and access to capital.
“We need policies that promote young people to thrive, through mentorship, skills building and business development services. Young people are tech-savvy. But, to take full advantage of the digital space to promote their businesses requires affordable infrastructure – Internet access is costly, Wi-Fi is costly, bundles for on-the-go access are also costly and so is energy,” she said.
Youth Motion have also launched another initiative to promote the AfCFTA. AfCFTArt is a series of art competitions targeting talented young student artists from 20 countries across five regions of Africa
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