East African Perspectives on an Equitable and Transformative Continental Free Trade Area
Channel: Regions Refocus
Date: 2016-08-22

Examining the Continental Free Trade Area as a mechanism of regional integration for Africa, this video features participants in the the workshop "Towards an Equitable and Transformative Continental Free Trade Area: A Heterodox and Feminist Approach," co-convened by Third World Network-Africa, Regions Refocus, and Southern and Eastern African Trade, Information, and Negotiations Institute (SEATINI), in collaboration with Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, from 27-30 April 2016 in Kampala, Uganda.

This introductory video outlines the elements of a transformative CFTA as an instrument towards meaningful regional integration in Africa. Highlighting a range of views, the video articulates the importance of a feminist approach to the CFTA and examines the potentially contradictory imperatives between the CFTA and the existing global trade order as characterized by WTO strictures and agreements between African sub-regions and the European Union and United States. 

Featuring Yash Tandon (founder of SEATINI and author of Trade is War), Honorable Abubakar Zein Abubakar of the East African Legislative Assembly, Eunice Musiime (Executive Director of Akina Mama wa Afrika), Marren Akatsa-Bukachi (Executive Director of the East African Sub-regional Support Initiative), Godber Tumushabe (of Great Lakes Association of Strategic Studies), Fredrick Njehu (formerly of Kenya Human Rights Commission), Leila Kituyi of Tax Justice Network-Africa, and other representatives of civil society and academia from across East Africa and beyond.