Encouraging news emerged this week when it was announced that the AfCFTA Secretariat will be collaborating with Zenpay Limited to develop a digital platform that should make it much easier to trade under the AfCFTA guidelines. Zenpay, established in 2018, has been working on developing digital payment technologies to make transactions easier for employees and employers alike.
The new platform, known as SMARTAfCFTA, will reportedly “streamline and unlock vast opportunities for trade across the African continent, providing information like trade indicators, market trends, custom tariffs, trade agreements, Rules of Origin, market access requirements of relevant jurisdictions, export potentials, export diversification indicators” and other information to the private sector operating across Africa.
Developments such as these are incredibly encouraging to all those who want to see Africa thrive. While having the infrastructure of the AfCFTA in place is undoubtedly a great place to start moving African trade in a liberalised direction, businesses across the continent need to have information on how to best utilise the AfCFTA. SMARTAfCFTA can help this occur.
The announcement to begin this new platform has been a long-time coming. Discussions to create a digital platform to support small and medium enterprises, as well as entrepreneurs, began almost four years ago and finally came to fruition this week. In addition, it is important to note that SMARTAfCFTA will not play a similar role to the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System, known as PAPSS. Rather, while PAPSS is known as “Africa’s payment highway,” SMARTAfCFTA is not a payment platform but rather a complement to PAPSS, indicating that there will not be competition amongst payment platforms.
Alexander Jelloian
Alexander Jelloian is the Research and Project Manager at the Initiative for African Trade and Prosperity.
Encouraging news emerged this week when it was announced that the AfCFTA Secretariat will be collaborating with Zenpay Limited to develop a digital platform that should make it much easier to trade under the AfCFTA guidelines. Zenpay, established in 2018, has been working on developing digital payment technologies to make transactions easier for employees and employers alike.
The new platform, known as SMARTAfCFTA, will reportedly “streamline and unlock vast opportunities for trade across the African continent, providing information like trade indicators, market trends, custom tariffs, trade agreements, Rules of Origin, market access requirements of relevant jurisdictions, export potentials, export diversification indicators” and other information to the private sector operating across Africa.
Developments such as these are incredibly encouraging to all those who want to see Africa thrive. While having the infrastructure of the AfCFTA in place is undoubtedly a great place to start moving African trade in a liberalised direction, businesses across the continent need to have information on how to best utilise the AfCFTA. SMARTAfCFTA can help this occur.
The announcement to begin this new platform has been a long-time coming. Discussions to create a digital platform to support small and medium enterprises, as well as entrepreneurs, began almost four years ago and finally came to fruition this week. In addition, it is important to note that SMARTAfCFTA will not play a similar role to the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System, known as PAPSS. Rather, while PAPSS is known as “Africa’s payment highway,” SMARTAfCFTA is not a payment platform but rather a complement to PAPSS, indicating that there will not be competition amongst payment platforms.
Alexander Jelloian
Alexander Jelloian is the Research and Project Manager at the Initiative for African Trade and Prosperity.