African Youth Coalition Against EPAs

PRESS RELEASE - African Governments must not sign EPAs but double its efforts to achieve MDGs.

As December draws close, African governments are under intense pressure by the European Union (EU) to conclude the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs).

The EPA in essence is a reciprocal free trade agreement that the EU is negotiating on bilateral basis with African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) countries.

This means that African countries would be forced to open up their economies for highly competitive European services and operations when it comes into being.

When this happens local industries would be forced to fold up because they cannot withstand the competition. This is because they do not have the capacity to compete with EU goods and operations which would dominate African economies – thus leading to massive unemployment and loss of government’s revenue.

Additionally, African countries do not stand the chance of making any gains in the current negotiations. This is because African governments are negotiating through regional blocs such as the ECOWAS, EAC and SADC.

These poor and weak blocs are negotiating with the EU which has a membership of 25 with a combined GDP of about $13.300 billion.

It is very evident that the EPAs would collapse African economies, hinder regional integration, aggravate regional segmentation and further worsen the poverty crisis bedeviling the continent.

This is why we are calling on African governments to ‘Stop the EPAs’ and focus on how to improve its regional integration and economies.

As today marks the mid-point of achieving the MDGs, we entreat the government of Ghana and Africa for that matter to double its efforts to achieving the goals by 2015.

Although Ghana is making giant strides as far as the attainment of the goals are concerned, we call for more advocacy, analysis and an increment in budgetary allocation to the health, gender, water and sanitation sectors of the economy.

Issued in Accra on 07/07/07 for enquiries please contact Kenneth Nana Amoateng, Abibimman Foundation, call 0243922683, 0244023651.

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