Civil Society Wants EPA Agreement Suspended

The African Union -Civil Society Organisations Pre-Summit in Accra has ended with a call on member countries to resist pressure from European Union towards the signing of the Economic Partnership Agreement in December.

Participants called on African leaders to extend the deadline for conclusion of the negotiation on the EPA by at least 3 years. That they said would enable African governments to conduct independent impact assessment on the EPA policies.

Participants feared that EPAs, if signed in December, would compromise the integration of the continent because as the tariffs set in, the EPAs will no doubt undercut the common tariff regime that would exist in the Regional Economic Corporation.

A final report read by Ismael Owyango Noo, chairman of the function, stated that the meeting agreed during their session that Africa’s major priority is the need to build and retain human capacity.

He said, that would underscore the necessity and urgency for Africa to ensure that educational support is made part of the AU-EU joint strategy.

The report also called on Europe to change the current mode of interaction with Africa, where it behaves as a ‘senior” partner. The forum suggested that, the joint strategy must be one of equal partnership, mutual respect and mutual accountability.

The delegates also saw the need for Africa to move away from a fragmented to unified approach of engagement with other regions of the world, especially, Europe. The forum said Europe uses the continent’s division to wrong-foot and overwhelm it with a deluge of bilateral treaties.

Their view was that Europe always has an upper hand in its bilateral relations with African countries because the latter has been divided and does not engage on the basis of a common position.

Stepeh Othieno, Executive Assistant/General Secretary of Pan-African Movement told The Statesman that the theme for the summit, “United States of Africa and its modalities” received much attention during the discussion period, adding that “this summit has yielded good results.”

Eyob Balcha, a representative of Afroflage Youth remarked that Africa needed “fresh blood” in such seminars, to deliberate on how future leaders could be extensively educated and developed to think proactively to be able to provide beneficial suggestion for the development of Africa.

The summit, which started on Wednesday, attracted over a hundred participants from various civil society organisations across the continent.

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