The African Continental Free Trade Area secretariat is admonishing African countries to focus on the production of consumer goods to discourage the importation of goods into the continent.

According to the Chief Technical Advisor of the Secretariat, Prudence Sebahizi, trade deficit can be resolved when African countries add value to their exported resources.

Speaking at the ABSA-UPSA Law School Quarterly Banking Roundtable discussion, he opined that African countries should have a robust economic structure that will facilitate trade finance.

“Most African countries are exporting unprocessed products, but import finished product which means they get less in what they are exporting in return. The solution is for us to add value to what we are producing,” he said

Commenting on intra-trading among African countries, he said it’s presently very low, adding there is the need for countries within the sub-region to trade among each other to address the issue confronting exchange rate fluctautions.

“The level of intra African trade is very low which is less than 20%. This means we import more than 80% of what we consume. By doing so, we are losing twice as a continent, Thus the value of our currencies is deprecaiting because of the many imports we’re doing”, he added.

The African Continental Free Trade Area aims at accelerating intra-African trade and subsequently boost Africa’s trading position in the global market by strengthening Africa’s common voice and policy space in global trade negotiations. The secretariat with an economic bloc of $3.4 trillion is pushing for a continent-wide free trade to $1.3 billion people regardless challenges including poor road networks.