African Union urges agreement to remove global trade barriers

African Union Commission (AUC) Chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma said Thursday that African countries would be satisfied when an agreement is reached at the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting in Nairobi to remove barriers to global trade.

"We have the unfinished agenda from the WTO ministerial talks in Bali. We want to secure an agreement on trade facilitation and the removal of barriers that impede trade," Dlamini-Zuma told Xinhua in an exclusive interview in Pretoria.

Ministers of trade and foreign affairs are gearing up for the ministerial meeting in Nairobi that would determine whether efforts to ease trade barriers progress to a binding agreement. The meeting is scheduled to be held Dec. 15-18.

Ahead of the meeting, China has pledged it would assist African countries to benefit from new financial cooperation by using the Renminbi to promote trade between the two sides.

China has also pledged it would assist Africa in improving in-house industrial capacity by building industrial zones that would help make Africa a new economic power-house.

"We want to secure an agreement on trade facilitation," AUC Deputy Chairperson Erastus Mwencha said in Pretoria, South Africa, which will host the Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) due to be held Friday and Saturday in Johannesburg.

Without the implementation of the WTO's trade facilitation agreement of 2013, experts fear the progress of implementing the outcome of the Bali Talks, on overcoming trade barriers, would be lost.

A team of diplomats appointed by WTO Director-General Roberto Azevêdo, presented last week a draft declaration to all members in order to support them in developing a ministerial declaration at the Nairobi meeting after a 10-year deadlock on global trade talks. Endit