The African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) encapsulates a dynamic liberal regime governing Africa’s trade in agriculture. AfCFTA imposes continental-wide commitments for contracting parties to liberalise trade in agriculture through the incremental elimination of tariffs and non-tariff barriers. This liberal regulatory regime promoted under the AfCFTA is recognised as a vehicle for boosting intra-African agricultural trade flows, and lowering of Africa’s dependence on food imports for its food security needs, among other loft objectives. This chapter examines the regulation of trade in agriculture under the AfCFTA with a view to determine whether a liberal model adopted under the aforesaid agreement is accommodative of the food security needs of the African countries. The chapter argues that the underlying free trade thesis which constitutes the very ideological justification for the AfCFTA agricultural trade has wider cracks and is unsustainable when examined in scope of the international and domestic obligations imposed by the human right to food on contracting parties. Therefore, this chapter argues that there is a need for the AfCFTA liberal rules in agriculture to be re-calibrated so that they advance the realisation of the human right to food.

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Recalibrating the Regulation of Trade in Agriculture Under the African Continental Free Trade Agreement to Realise the Human Right to Food

  • Shelton Tapiwa Mota Makore

摘要

The African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) encapsulates a dynamic liberal regime governing Africa’s trade in agriculture. AfCFTA imposes continental-wide commitments for contracting parties to liberalise trade in agriculture through the incremental elimination of tariffs and non-tariff barriers. This liberal regulatory regime promoted under the AfCFTA is recognised as a vehicle for boosting intra-African agricultural trade flows, and lowering of Africa’s dependence on food imports for its food security needs, among other loft objectives. This chapter examines the regulation of trade in agriculture under the AfCFTA with a view to determine whether a liberal model adopted under the aforesaid agreement is accommodative of the food security needs of the African countries. The chapter argues that the underlying free trade thesis which constitutes the very ideological justification for the AfCFTA agricultural trade has wider cracks and is unsustainable when examined in scope of the international and domestic obligations imposed by the human right to food on contracting parties. Therefore, this chapter argues that there is a need for the AfCFTA liberal rules in agriculture to be re-calibrated so that they advance the realisation of the human right to food.