- Negotiations
Since 2008, there was talk about merging the member states of COMESA, the East African Community (EAC, with five members) and the Southern Africa Development Cooperation (SADC, with 14 members). In 2011, leaders of the 26 African countries within these three existing regional economic communities announced plans to negotiate a tripartite free trade area between them which would, cover over 600 million people and an estimated US$1 trillion in trade. In June 2011 in Johannesburg governments adopted the negotiating principles, modalities for negotiations and a roadmap for negotiating such an agreement at the 2nd Comesa-EAC-Sadc Summit. The first negotiating round was held in Nairobi in December 2011 and in June 2015 the "Tripartite Free Trade Area" or #TFTA was finally signed. It now needs to be ratified by the assemblies of parliaments of each member state to come into effect.
The texts of the FTA are here: http://www.tralac.org/resources/by-region/comesa-eac-sadc-tripartite-fta.html.
This agreement is to form the precursor of a continental Africa-wide FTA or CFTA.
last update: June 2015
photo: Tahrir Institute
24-May-2007
People’s Daily
The leaders mandated Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki to convene a joint summit of COMESA, the South Africa Development Community (SADC) and the East African Community (EAC) to discuss the harmonization of the cross-border trading system.
3-Jun-2006
IPP Media
East African countries have been implored to pull out their individual membership from the Common Markets for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and South Africa Development Community (SADC) and choose the suitable one to re-join it as an EAC bloc.