Digital Trade

This piece argues that digital trade is an essential developmental tool in a fast-paced world. However, to get the full value of digital trade, AfCFTA member-states must embrace the use of digital trade. This may be achieved by strategic design of the AfCFTA Protocol on E-commerce.

The fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is marked by an intensive digitalisation process. Within the process, digital data (physical information converted into digital) and digital technologies restructure how things are done and values are created. Various initiatives and strategies from the very recent AU Data Policy Framework to the Africa Digital Transformation Strategy (ADTS), the Smart Africa Manifesto and the E-Commerce Protocol of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which is still under discussion, are intended to galvanize such processes. The regulatory disparity, coupled with the path-dependent asymmetric relationship between actors shapes the degree of leverage they might have over the operation and outcome of such connectivity.

This Workshop, hosted by the Competence Center for African Research (CCAR), University of St.Gallen jointly with the Afronomicslaw.org, seeks to examine the ongoing effort towards digital transformation, and particularly E-Commerce.

The organising committee invites the submission of abstracts (max. 300 words) or full papers (max.5000 words) from researchers and practitioners in the fields of international trade, development, finance and investment. All abstracts should be formatted to facilitate the review process.

The EU is often touted as providing an exemplary model for regional integration in the field of competition policy. It has indeed been successful in many ways – integrating diverse markets through strict anti-cartel laws, introducing an effective one-stop-shop merger regime in the 1990s, and tackling dominance steadfastly albeit less prolifically.However, given its experimentalist and ever-evolving nature, the EU competition regime is also bound to sometimes 'get it wrong'. In the author’s view, this statement holds true regarding the digital markets domain that was recently earmarked for regulation in the EU.

Towards the end of 2020, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), through its African Trade Policy Centre (ATPC), launched a training and research initiative on “Digital trade regulatory integration in Africa”, focusing on 11 pilot countries. Based on their background and expertise in the area, researchers from Cameroon, Chad, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia were selected to build two databases, for each of countries of focus, on various measures related to digital services trade regulations and digital trade integration, respectively.