Professor Franklyn Lisk was invited by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) to participate as a panellist in their sponsored event to mark the launch of the Continental Free Trade Area for Africa (CFTA) at the WTO Public Forum in Geneva, 26-28 September 2017.

The CFTA discussions were focused on reducing trade costs, expanding Africa’s economic and market space and driving regional competitiveness and efficiency, and at the same time ensuring that attention is not diverted away from important human rights implications of trade liberalisation.

Specifically, Professor Lisk’s intervention drew attention to likelihood that liberalisation of trade will impact differently on diverse socio-economic groups due to unequal access to assets, credit and economic opportunities, and that different types of workers ( in the context of industrialisation resulting from trade liberalisation) will also be differentially impacted depending on their skill-level or whether the sector or industry that they are employed in expands or contracts as a result of liberalisation.

Therefore, from the standpoint of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, the CFTA, should also pay particular attention to mechanisms aimed at promoting human rights in addition to seeking to reduce poverty in Africa.