McDan CEO to establish an African Trade Research Centre

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the McDan Group of Companies, Daniel McKorley, has hinted at establishing an African Trade Research Centre at the University for Professional Studies Law School.

The centre will be used to help African businesses enhance research, boost their capacities, and coordinate the same initiatives under the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

McKorley made this disclosure at a lecture in his honour last Friday, on “the AfCFTA and the new age of African Enterprise.”

According to the businessman, Africa is a “green market” that needs research centres that will look into African business to explore and exploit opportunities that the continent with over 50 countries has.

Referring to Singapore, he explained that the Island country alone is contributing about 6% to the global economy, while the continent as a whole contributes only 2%.

This situation, he said, called for a complete change and that could only be achieved through research.

“Singapore is just a small place. Why can’t we also look at what is happening around the world and see how we can contribute towards trade? This is why the research centre is very important.”

He donated a Nissan minibus to the law faculty of the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA) to aid their transportation, and pledged his support to enhance education in the country.

“It’s not just about this school. It’s about my support toward education in this country and, actually, business as a whole. You can see many educational institutions are coming up and some are churning out a lot of mature students, so that’s what motivated me to support them with the bus,” he said.

According to him, the current crop of business entrepreneurs has the best potential to make the intra-African trade a great deal for Africa through AfCFTA and urged them to position themselves to benefit.

On his part, the Secretary-General of AfCFTA, Wamkele Mene, said, the operational instruments involving Phase II of the trade agreement would be rolled out by August, this year, while that of Phase III would be done by the end of the year.

The protocols on the Phase II include investment policy, competition policy and intellectual property rights among others, while that of Phase III involves provisions on e-commerce.

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He assured that the trade agreement would bring about transformation of the African continent, and said, “Promoting industrialisation is back on Africa’s economic policy agenda, with renewed impetus and vigour.”

The quota free, duty-free agreement is meant to increased trade and investment on the African continent, which would spur its industrialisation.

The implementation of the AfCFTA would also help to develop essential regional value chains, where two or more regional member states are jointly involved in producing for some other country or for themselves.

This is expected to accelerate Africa’s integration into the global economy.

Secretary-General Mene also disclosed that the Pan-African Payment Platform (PAPSS) has been piloted in six West African countries, with the aim of the secretariat to roll out the system throughout the continent by the end of the year.

The payment system was formally launched by the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) at the African Union extraordinary summit in July 2019.

In December 2020, the interim Governing Council of PAPSS had their inaugural meeting in Cairo, Egypt, which was a major step towards the operationalisation of the payment system.